Come Full Circle
by Servant of SHEVAL
Summary: A crossover with The Ring. Sam convinces Dean that they should look into an old rumor about a videotape, and how it may be connected to many recent deaths. The curse is spreading, but how can they investigate it without watching the tape themselves?
1. Chapter 1

The two sounds resonating in the quiet, empty house were the ticking of a grandfather clock as its pendulum swung back and forth, and the quick swiping of a brush drawn through long red hair. Slowly she began to hum her favorite song, and stood up, bare feet padding along the carpeted halls. Flicking on the TV next to the clock, she ignored the drawling news reporter in favor of getting a snack from the fridge in the kitchen.

Her song continued, she began to whisper the words to the chorus, the only part she really remembered: "Listen to your heart... when he's calling for you..." the girl continued to work the brush through a particularly annoying tangle, while bending over and rummaging around deep inside the big refrigerator, looking for something that didn't need to be reheated.

"Listen to your heart... there's nothing else you can do..."

The cloudcover outside was heavy. A storm was coming, but it wasn't here yet. She went back out into the livingroom holding a small cup of yogurt, and a spoon. The reporter wasn't talking anymore... in fact, she wasn't even visible, the screen was just static.

"Hm." the girl stopped singing, and shrugged, setting the yogurt down on a table, and going back to her room to get her IPod instead. She came back a minute later, singing, "...I don't know where you're going, and I don't know why..." a glance at the TV showed her that it was still just grey, she shook her head and shrugged, ignoring it and flopping down on the couch, picking up her yogurt.

The blaring remix in her headphones kept her oblivious to her surroundings as she spooned the yogurt into her mouth, setting down the cup on the table as she finished, "But listen to your heart... before you tell him goodbye..." as the last note faded away, she turned toward the TV, about to shut it off and go to her room to sleep.

What she saw made her eyes go wide. The headphones clattered to the ground as she stood up. Having no idea what to do, and a look of blatant disbelief on her face, only one thought came to her mind: _9-1-1!_ she splashed through the growing puddle on the floor in front of the television set while running for her room, but the girl standing in the middle of it reached out a decayed grey arm and grasped her by the shoulder.

The two sounds resonating in the quiet, empty house were the bloodcurdling shrieking of the captive girl, and the IPod headphones blasting out their next song:

_'This is my last time' she said as she faded away,  
__'It's hard to imagine, but one day you'll end up like me'  
__then she said 'If you wanna get out alive  
__run, run for your life.  
__If you wanna get out alive  
__hold on for your life.'_

-

"That's another one!" came a man's defiant voice from across the diner's cheap plastic table, as he slapped down a newspaper and pointed to an article in the obituaries, staring pointedly past it with a look that said 'I told you so'.

His companion sighed, grudgingly putting down his coffee mug, "All right, lemme see it." he frowned as the paper was pushed across toward him, and he turned it around to read it upright. "Girl of nineteen... found dead by her parents when they came home... pool of water, man this is just a regular suicide drowning."

"Dean..." he said as he watched him from beneath curly dark bangs, "...she was in her livingroom."

He sighed again, "Then I don't know."

"So this could be our thing." he said even a little hopefully.

"I guess."

"We should at least check it out." he muttered, slightly disheartened.

"Okay, how do you plan to do that? They had her cremated, it says right there in the article. Funeral was private, and it's over."

"We can try some of the others." he suggested, shrugging, "You know how many have been popping up in the papers lately."

He frowned, and fingered his wallet, "Yeah, and I know how obsessed you've been about it."

"I'm telling you, I have a feeling..." he looked worriedly at the picture in the obituary.

Dean sighed, leaning forward and taking another swig of coffee, "All right, if you're that avid about this thing."

"And what makes you not?"

"Spirits in TVs, Sammy? That's sure what it sounds like, if we follow the pattern. That sounds... kinda lame. And fake. All the deaths were drowning or heart attack, you don't suppose a couple of idiots spilled some water on the floor then tried to turn the thing on and electrocuted themselves or something?"

"That's a weak excuse and you know it." he rolled the paper up and stuffed it in the backpack beside him.

"Yeah, maybe." he stood, and dropped down a few bucks for tip, then heading to the little counter by the door with the receipt to pay for the rest of their breakfast.

Sam sighed and stood up as well, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and following his brother out. "So what're we going to do?"

"I don't know. Like you said, you wanted to check out some of the other victims, then pick one, we'll go there."

"All right, uhh..." he walked out into the parkinglot and opened up the passenger side door to the Impala, kneeling on the seat and reaching into the back where there was a growing collection of newspapers. He sifted through them, just glancing at each one until he got the one he desired. He handed it to Dean while sitting down properly, and pointed to the right article, "Here."

Dean got in, looked at it, and nodded. "All right, then. I guess we're off."

-

"Sam, you sure about these people?" Dean asked after they'd knocked on the door of an out-of-the-way little house, "Them making all that fuss in the papers and things..."

"That's exactly why we're here." he muttered, "They don't believe the reasons the doctors fed them, they're all the more likely to go along with our theory. You should know this by now."

"Yeah, yeah-" he started, but was cutoff as the door before them opened.

"Hello?" came a timid female voice, as a girl poked her head through the door to look up at them.

Dean's face broke into a warm grin, "Hel-lo..."

Sam rolled his eyes, and quickly nudged him, making the man jump a little and look over, "Don't..." he muttered.

"Um... who are you?" asked the girl, glancing down at their feet, then scanning them over from the bottom up with slightly red eyes.

Sam looked back down at her, "Hi, we're writing an article, and just want to ask some questions. Are your parents home?"

She shook her head, "No. But they won't answer your questions, they're sick of being ridiculed..."

"Well, we promise we won't ridicule them." Sam tried again, "Do you know when they'll come back?"

The girl's face twisted into a contemplative scowl for a moment, "They don't even know what's going on anyway..." she muttered.

"What?"

"No-one believes them..." she explained, "But they don't believe me. Not when I tell them what really happened to Kayla."

Dean raised an eyebrow, looking at Sam, recognition of the name she'd mentioned sparking as being the same in the second obituary Sam had handed him today, the one they used to get here, "And... what was that?"

"Is Kayla your sister?" Sam asked.

She nodded, before licking her lips thoughtfully, "You probably won't buy it either..." she muttered.

Dean chuckled softly, "Oh, don't worry about that... we believe all sorts of weird stuff."

-

"I'm not buying it." Dean stomped back into their hotel room and frustratedly threw down his keys on the nightstand.

"How can you say that?" Sam sighed, walking to his own bed and sitting down just as his brother flopped over on the other, "That's why she didn't want to tell us... and we of all people should understand."

"Come on, man!" he growled, putting his hands over his face tiredly, "Evil Videotape? You've got to be kidding me."

"Dean..."

"A bunch of teenagers get a little drunk and creative one Halloween night and borrow their dad's old camera..."

"Dean..."

"I mean seriously, this is like the oldest rumor in the book! It can't be real it's like... like... Escaped Convict Hook-Hand Man."

"And _that_ turned out to be true!" Sam stood up and leaned over the bed, glaring down angrily at his brother, with a background of brown-patterned bed quilts, "And so did Bloody Mary, Dean we can't just sit and let this pass."

Dean shook his head, "What're we supposed to do? I know there's alot of deaths... if you're right about this whole stupid thing, there's bound to be alot more, but it's not like we can _watch_ the tape to find out what, and why the spirit's doin' what it is... if what they say is true..."

"We might not need to. All we need to know is how to stop its curse from spreading."

"Yeah, if it even has a curse."

"Dean..."

"Yeah, all right, all right." he sat up again, looking up at Sam, "What time is it?"

Sam glanced over at the mostly-hidden-by-things clock on the rickety nightstand, "Just a little past noon." he answered.

"Too early to get drunk yet?" Dean asked hopefully. His brother frowned.

"Yeah."

Sighing, he stood up and rubbed the back of his head, "Right, then, well... I suppose we should go and find out more about this tape, huh? I mean, it can't be that hard, just walk into any highschool dance, if they let us, and start interrogating the couples who watched because they mistook it for a porno."

"Dean!" Sam glared at him severely.

"Just kidding, Sammy." he waved it off with a mischievous smile, "Lighten up."

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Decided to try something new here, after I realized how perfectly wonderfully well these two genres fit. This just preliminary, might change a few things, probably add more than take away. Roleplaying and whatnot got me out of my FF7 and specifically Vincent craze, and into a couple of the more interesting crossovers I'd come up with. Hope you all like, please review, it's very encouraging.

Oh, P.S. not a songfic... well, I might incorporate more lyrics into chapters like that, but it's definitely not a songfic. The first song was actually just in there 'cause of a friend. wink


	2. Chapter 2

Finding out more about the tape proved to be harder than they'd thought. Among those few who would talk to them in the first place were those who knew nothing about the rumor, those who refused to relate to them the rumor, and a handful of young girls who more likely would just rather oggle Dean, much to Sam's displeasure, as he was the one, now, with the task of making sure his brother restrained himself.

"Well that got us a whole lot of nothing." the elder complained as they drove toward another school where they could camp out around dismissal time, and pull aside people with the lie that they were reporters or something, the usual, and most successful excuse.

"Patience, Dean..." Sam muttered, rifling through some more things in the stack of newspapers.

"And you're littering my car with crap." he glanced in the mirror, looking into the backseat where there was a shuffled mess of newspapers. "Couldn't you at least take clippings or something?"

Sam sighed frustratedly, "Allright, look, I'll take them into our room when we get back to the hotel today." he agreed.

Dean nodded with approval. "That's more like it."

"But I like to have them with me... when we travel around, so I can check up on things on the way..." he tried one last time to justify the stacks.

"No. Look, if you want it to be portable, take _clippings_..." he emphasized, "And put it in a journal, like Dad's. Only you would call it a scrapbook, Sammy."

"Haha." he glared over at his brother.

"Or a diary."

"Very funny."

"Yeah, whatever." Dean rolled his eyes. Pssh, just 'cause he had no sense of humor... "Point is, I want them out by tonight."

Sam nodded, "I got that."

-

He was dropped off at the hotel to research while Dean went out 'gathering information'... more like carousing. Sam sighed, and shook the bangs out of his eyes, popping open a can of soda and taking a drink.

He sat down on his bed, and stretched out, first thing was first, cut out all the relevant newspapers... with a sigh, he set to work with a pair of scissors.

-

Dean came bursting in the door at about 1:30 AM, half drunk and grinning.

"Did you actually find out _anything_ about the tape?" Sam asked, not even bothering to look up from the computer screen. He was surrounded by little scraps of papers, a gluestick, some half-buried scissors, and a notepad already full front to back with little glued in newspaper clippings.

"Hm, I don't know, how about you, Sammy?" he grinned lopsidedly, and walked over to the other bed, dumping his bag down.

"You're really wearing that nickname out." he replied angrily, typing something up.

Dean sighed, and sat, leaning his elbows on his knees and trying to get a glimpse of what

Sam was working on, "No really. We both know that six hours of you in front of a computer screen is way more productive than six hours of me out clubbing."

Sam smirked. There was no arguing with that. "Well," he began, leaning back and stretching his arms and neck, as he'd been hunched over the laptop for quite a time. "Spent almost all the time searching around on various messageboards, trying to find all I can about this tape myth. Didn't get too much. Rumors and kids being how they are, alot of it's just made up, but with how much certain things seemed to be popping up, I think there's a few constants we can count on." he leaned back over the machine and pulled up another window.

Dean nodded, "All right, shoot."

"Well, it looks like there's a couple of images in this thing that really stand out. Uh, there's a... white ring against a black circle, a woman brushing her hair in the mirror, the same woman diving off a cliff..."

"Wait, wait, wait..." Dean interrupted, "If they've all supposedly seen this video, why are they able to write about it before they die?"

"Well, apparently the video doesn't kill you immediately. These all also say that after you watch it, you get a phone call, and someone tells you that you have seven days to live."

He raised an eyebrow. "A phone call." he repeated skeptically, "Y'know, the more I hear about this thing, the more it seems like total crap."

"Just hear me out!" Sam pleaded, "There's more. They say there's a way to stop the curse from killing you."

Dean chuckled. "Useful to know. Allright, what is it?"

"Ah..." he scrolled around a page for a little bit, trying to find it, "They say to lift the curse off yourself, you have to show the tape to another person."

Dean smirked, "Likely story. No wonder so many people have been dying, with a cure like that."

"Supposedly some _have_ lived, though." Sam looked up, "There's some legitimate accounts of people who've seen, showed others, and lived. But there's even more people who've shown others the tape, and died. It's inconsistent."

He nodded again, "That all you got?"

"Pretty much, yeah." he straightened yet again, saved a few things, then closed the laptop and set about trying to organize the little scraps all over his bed, "Dare I ask what happened to you?"

Dean grinned, "I was hoping you would." he reached into the bag he'd thrown down, and pulled out a plain, unmarked black videocassette, holding it up triumphantly.

Sam's eyes went _wide_, "Dean, you _didn't_..." he breathed.

"Naw, don't worry, I didn't watch it..." he smiled, "But some chick offered to give hers to me, probably to lift the curse off herself..." this thought seemed to bring him back down out of the clouds slightly. He sighed.

"I'm sorry, Dean." Sam muttered... though knowing his brother would get over it. After all, he'd probably only just met her and chatted a bit in whatever bar, before she shoved the thing at him, and they went their separate ways.

"Yeah, don't worry about it." he muttered, "I just figured we could do with one less of these things floating around in the world." he held it out to Sam.

He took it, and nodded, still cleaning up some newspaper clippings.

"All right, well if you don't mind, then I'm going to sleep. As it is right now, tomorrow I'll probably be up late."

"You're always up late." said Sam, stacking the papers together, and setting them aside.

"Late-_er_." Dean rolled his eyes and corrected. "Don't you be up researching too much

either. I know you always pull that laptop of yours out after you think I'm asleep."

The younger looked over him with an expression of mild surprise, which was matched with a sly grin.

"Night, Sammy." he flopped over, and pulled up the covers, turning out the lights.

"Night..." Sam quietly responded, looking down at the tape. He didn't need this getting back out of their hands again... carefully sliding it under his pillow, right next to the gun that was always beneath there, he lay down, as usual waiting for Dean to go to sleep.

-

_Everything was black. Something was whistling, a faraway, echoing sound that didn't seem completely natural... it grew in strength, as if coming nearer, and a searing white glow burned a circle in his vision. It disappeared. _

_Blood red water flowed away... waves carrying it to some unknown destination. _

_A deep, wet breathing, labored, loud. Everything was white, and in the center of the __emptiness sat an unoccupied chair, simple, made of wood. White._

_A thousand points of light tore through a textured blackness, like slow-moving meteors. _

_A blank wall, an oval window in the right corner... or was it a window? A reflection? A woman stared blankly out at him, pulling a brush calmly through long dark hair._

_The image flipped, the mirror or window was on the left. Someone was retreating away backwards from inside it. He thought he heard a song..._

**_"Here we go, the world is spinning,  
__when it stops, it's just beginning,"_**

_The breathing continued. The image flipped again. The woman was looking over to where the mirror had been just before._

_Something flashed, sharp, gone._

_The top corner of a house with a slanted roof, the foreground to a cloudy grey sky, but everything was grey. Someone was standing in a closed window, looking down._

_A windswept tree stood on a cliff, its thin, ragged form desperately clinging to the grass and earth above the sheer rock that lay beyond, and the fading grey horizon. Then a speck, like an insect wandered across the scene, as if it were only a painting or a picture, spiraling in toward the middle. It's wings fluttered like it would fly away._

_A disgusting squishing noise sounded before a human mouth came into view, stretched wider than a mouth should go, stark, bone-white teeth stood out amidst the dark inside of the mouth and the dirty grey skin around it._

He felt his body twitch reflexively with the sudden, disturbing sight, but beyond that couldn't move, couldn't open his eyes.

_A noise like a twittering bird sped up and twice as loud, something was writhing back and __forth, something dark. _

_A crescent moon, then a burning bush... a dark, bent treelike form, branches stretching __toward the sun, and reeling from the wind with a gold flame consuming it from the top down._

_Then a scream rang out, mechanized, sounding more like the beep of a machine than a human's voice, a finger descended on a rusted screw, blood flooding out of the puncture wound._

A gasp, his hands closed around some kind of fabric, but he could feel his own fingernails digging painfully into his palms even through this.

_That disgusting squishing noise again, an endless shot of wriggling maggots... it flashed, were they humans now?_

_That same chair was now at the corner of a table, upon which rested a glass of clear water. The chair was being pushed out by an unseen force. A centipede, out of proportion, it must have been, it was at least as big as the chair itself crawled out from beneath, taking a curving path away across the white. _

_Some kind of animal limped across a doorway, dark earth crumbling beneath its three paws, the fourth a mere bloody stub raised into the air. A shot of its eye._

_The crescent moon._

_Eight human fingers twitching in a box, newly severed, the nerves within them still firing, trying to move, to escape the confinement. The burning tree came again, amidst the endless scream, but it hadn't been burned at all. The fires still danced along the branches, like golden leaves in the fall. The picture lingered much longer than before. Whitenoise broke into the scream._

_The same writhing figure appeared, the noises all distorted into one another now._

He was aware of himself flailing uselessly, something holding his limbs down, tangling them up, keeping them in place. He moved faster and faster and faster, his strokes becoming more desperate against the invisible captor, but to no avail.

_The scream faded away, and the woman in the mirror appeared herself, turning toward him from where she'd been examining her reflection. Her hair was now neatly up in a bun. She gave him a knowing look, though her expression didn't change. There was something in those dark, blank eyes..._

_The corner of the house appeared again, the window was empty._

_The chair, upside down and spinning._

_A ladder stood against a glass wall, reflected against itself. The hall sloped upwards and to the right._

_Dark waves washed up on a darker shore, wet, sandy beach with rocks jutting out in the background. Dark bodies, inhuman, were touched by the water's tide, moving ever-so-slightly along with it. They were dead. Off in the distance something flashed pure white against the dim, a tower silhouetted on the sky._

_The song quietly started up again, a haunting tune._

**_"Sun comes out, and we all laugh,  
__sun goes down, and we all die..."_**

_The same grassy cliff came up, zooming in on the scene with the scraggly tree as if running forward. The woman who had been brushing her hair stood front and center of the image, staring out at the ocean beyond. She fell forward, her limp arms forced out to the sides as she took a swan dive over the dropoff._

_The ladder teetered, falling away._

_The crescent moon was waning, the new moon came, an eclipse, a white circle scorching his eyes..._

_The ladder clattered soundlessly onto the ground. Breathing. Guttural breathing._

_There was a clearing, surrounded by tall, spindly trees. Mist and cloud covered the ground and sky like underbrush, and leaves on the barren branches. In the middle of the grassy area was a small round structure made of stone._

_In a flash, everything was black._

-

Sam felt his eyelids over his eyes again, aware that he'd been asleep, now barely aware that he was once again awake. There was a moment of calm, before visions came rushing back to him.

With a strangled gasp, he sat bolt upright, eyes wide in the darkness. His laptop slid off his chest as he sat up and hit the floor with a slam. His gaze darted wildly around the room. where was he, _who_ was he? What had just happened? What were those... those _things_ he'd just seen, the images, and how had he seen them? His mind felt like it was splitting... that was... the worst nightmare he'd ever had! He raised a hand to his forehead and touched it tenderly.

Something stirred beneath a blanket not too far away. He gasped again. What was here? Something was in there with him. His hand shot beneath the pillow, groping around for his gun. It clasped around something smooth and cold, and pulled it out.

He looked at the strange shape in the darkness, a rectangle... not a gun. What on earth...

Then it hit him, _The tape..._ he thought, _Beneath my pillow... my dream... the images, the woman in the mirror, diving off the cliff..._ had he... _dreamed_ what was on the tape?

The familiar jingling ringtone sounded out in the night, making him jump nervously, his entire body immediately tensed. He stared blankly as it continued to ring… twice… three times…

"Ahhh..." came a frustrated moan from the next bed, "Damnit, Sam, that's yours, now pick it up."

Sam looked wide-eyed at his brother, who didn't pay him any attention, facing the other direction anyway. He made a muffled noise in his throat... at least Dean couldn't sense his total and absolute fear...

A shaking, cold sweaty hand reached out for the small device on the nightstand. It was barely illuminated by the green glow of the numbers on the clock, reading 3:12. He opened up the cellphone and answered in a broken voice, "H-hello?"

A childlike response came to him, "Seven Days..."

"Oh god..."

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** So when I wrote this, the ring tape was not nearly as creepy or well written as I wanted it to be. I might go back and change this as well. I need this chapter to be as absolutely terrifying as the real images were.


	3. Chapter 3

"Sam, you've got to be kidding me."

"I'm telling you, Dean, I dreamt what was on the tape!"

"And how can you be sure? You've never seen it for real." Dean turned around and faced his brother with an angry, but worried expression on his face. Sam had woken him up not long ago, and explained what had happened to him. Now, he was pacing around the hotel room, wide awake, wearing nothing but a pair of beaten up jeans that he'd slipped over his boxers on the way out of bed. Outside, the sky was getting light.

"But I've heard from people who had... I saw all the same images, even some that I wasn't sure were legit until I saw them just now." he explained.

"And don't you think that's convenient?" Dean said frustratedly, turning to him, "That you read all about that thing, and the stuff that happens in it, and then you dream about the stuff you read?"

Sam frowned. He had a bit of a point there. "But..." he began softly, "...I got a call on my cellphone. A little girl, she said I had seven days..." he explained.

"You were probably still dreaming."

With a sigh, he reached out and snatched the phone off the nightstand, and opened it up, pressing a few buttons to reveal the recently received calls. At the top of the list, there one that was not five seconds long. "That was her." he said and pointed.

"Then what's the return number, I'll track that bitch down." Dean came over and peered at the screen, "What the hell?" he whispered a moment later.

"No return number." Sam answered, "No number. It doesn't even say that it was blocked, it's just a bunch of... symbols."

"What the hell?" Dean repeated, gritting his teeth together and standing up.

Sam sighed... he had to remain calm, even though Dean wasn't. "Well... look, I could watch the tape now, just to doublecheck if its the same thing in my dream..."

His brother whirled again to face him, "No! Do you have any idea how _stupid_ that is?" he yelled, "What if it isn't? What if it's not the same? What if by watching it, you actually condemn yourself to this seven days crap when you would've been just fine to begin with?"

"So you're positive this thing is real now?" he frowned, still calm, however a little annoyed with Dean's overzealous worry.

At that, Dean turned and slammed his fist down on the nightstand, missing possibly crushing his own cellphone by mere centimeters. "All right. That's it. We're done."

"We're what?" breathed Sam, baffled.

"We're outta here." Dean reached under his bed and pulled out the shirt he'd thrown there before going to sleep the night before, and slipped it on.

"We're... wait, where are we going?" the younger asked, standing up. "And why?"

"Dunno. Away from here. Get your things." Dean simply ordered, snatching his cellphone, charger, wallet, and keys off a nearby shelf, then walking briskly over to the chair where he'd discarded his jacket, and sticking everything in the appropriate pockets before pulling it on.

Sam just stared with a look of bewilderment, "You never said why." he said.

"Don't need to. Just do it."

"You're sounding like dad."

"So what if I am?"

"You know how I feel about that." Sam sneered defiantly.

"Look, I said get your things." Dean said leaning towards him slightly.

"You're not the-"

"Look, Sammy." he finally cut him off, walking nearer, "I don't give a damn about this tape, or this so-called curse, it didn't get you, allright?" he had more than a frown on his face now... his eyes were narrowed slightly with an emotion besides anger.

"Dean, just because you brought it here-"

"No, Sam. Don't give me that. You're fine. Now pack up your stuff and let's leave."

"But what about everyone else?" he asked, bending, and beginning to comply, sliding his fallen laptop back into his bag, also closing up his phone and putting it in there as well. "Everyone else who's seen the tape? This is our kinda thing, Dean. We know that now."

"No, there is no 'now'. If we ever decided this had anything to do with us, you having that dream didn't determine it."

"Fine, but we still owe it to all those people who've seen it... all the people who died..." he trailed off for a moment as he zipped closed the backpack and walked over to where he'd left his shoes, "We need to stop this thing. We're the only ones who can."

"They can figure out their own damn way." Dean said softly, heading out the door.

"Check out's probably not open yet..." Sam breathed, following.

"They'll figure it out."

"Wait." he stopped walking only a few steps out into the hall.

Dean turned around, sending his brother a questioning stare, "What is it?"

"The tape." Sam said, turning, "I've got to get it." he started back into the room, but Dean swiftly caught him by the elbow.

Sam gasped, turning toward Dean, "What're you doing?" he demanded.

"You are not taking that thing with us." the elder frowned.

"So you want me to just leave it here so someone else can find it?" he spat back, "I thought you took that thing so that we could have it for safekeeping. So that nobody else would get cursed, and it wouldn't spread."

Dean grit his teeth slightly. As much as he hated to admit it, Sam was right... it was hard enough to walk away from this job, when it could definitely be something... really serious. "All right. Fine." he agreed, pushing past his brother and heading in. "But we're not taking it with us."

Sam just stood in the doorway, looking confused, "Then what are you-"

He was cut off by a loud crunching sound.

"Dean!" he stared wide eyed as his brother stomped down on it with his foot, cracking the plastic and causing some of the film to come rolling out of it. "What're you doing!"

"Destroying it." he replied. "Nothing said that this thing would kill you if you smashed it up."

"Yes, but-"

"And don't you go sayin' that you're going to have to get someone else to see it for you, because you didn't see it, you hear?" He pointed at Sam as he kicked it a few more times, just for good measure, before looking up sternly.

"Yes Dean, but-"

"And then... just to be safe..." he started, bending down and scooping up the shards of black plastic and other parts lying in a heap on the floor, "...we're gonna salt this thing and burn it, just to be sure that whatever's haunting it stays down."

Sam shook his head slowly as Dean once again moved past, holding the wrecked device in his arms somewhat protectively. They went across the hall, down the stairs, out the door, and into the Impala, where it was promptly dumped into a bag.

They drove out of the city, and into the sunrise, stopping by the side of the road where Sam watched as his brother dug a small hole, and toss the bag in, insisting that he do this whole thing himself. He sprinkled salt, and sprayed holywater, muttered a Latin exorcism for good measure, and then lit the thing on fire, before driving away.

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy**: Yay, another chapter done for my favorite readers! Keep the reviews coming, those are the best EMails I get all summer... XD More to come soon, promise, unless I get distracted... I have a vacation looming on the horizon, but hopefully I'll get my new laptop all ready by then so I can update while I'm gone. I am hoping to get at least one, maybe two more chapters uploaded before I even leave, though... but then, as always, I don't know where this story's going. XD Lets hope things turn out okay for the Winchesters, ne?


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy:** I apologize in advance for any geographical stuff I may or may not get wrong while writing this. I spent six hours watching the movies, the special features, and freeze-framing The Ring, and The Ring Two, but there's only so much research I can put up with... so if you're from Washington or Oregon, and you think I'm an idiot... er... well, please don't. XD

---

Three days of very casual, meandering driving, and long restful stops had brought the two brothers out of Washington and into Oregon. At the moment, they were approaching the Southern border. Sam was very quiet throughout the trip, moreso than usual... He spent all his time scribbling away inside his new notebook of obituaries, things he'd collected over the past year, and old articles he'd dug up from even longer before that, all revolving around the strange videotape curse.

"You're obsessed, man." muttered Dean. Curiosity and boredom had driven him to ask Sam exactly what he'd seen during his dream, and even three days later, he could provide a detailed and, he guessed, completely accurate account without hesitation.

"I'm telling you, Dean. It's freaking me out. You know I'm not easily affected by this kind of stuff, neither of us are. We can't be, what with all the hunting we do. But there's something here... something about this, something serious, and it's making me uneasy."

"Well gee, I wonder why. You're mister morbid with a book full of gory obituaries. At least dad had some _variety_..."

Sam was silent, his head once again bowed as he hunched over the little book, scribbling away.

"Seriously, wells and water and creepy girls and women in mirrors?" Dean breathed, mostly to himself, yet not without a skeptical undertone.

"Happens alot." Sam said shortly. "Bloody Mary." he reminded.

-

_Sam stood, looking at his reflection in a mirror. It was oval, on a blank wall, reflecting nothing but his face and the equally blank wall behind him. It all seemed... so familiar..._

_Something was tickling him inside his throat, and his stomach felt uneasy. He frowned a little. It was hard to breathe, his lungs simply wouldn't take in breath... a gag reflex kicked in and his body convulsed, knocking him forward against his will. A hand shot up to support himself. It hit the mirror. It cracked._

_He was coughing, and struggling to breathe again, to no avail. Something felt like it was moving inside him, shuffling around in his stomach and coming up through his throat. Tears streamed from his squinting eyes as his entire body heaved to try and get the thing out!_

_One more rib-shattering cough and something dark spilled out of his mouth... not blood, it was... solid? With a scraping feeling all along his insides, a long cord pulled its way out of him, thick and spiny. The spikes twitched like legs... insect legs. And when it hit the ground before him, two antenna felt around, before the legs took off running, wrenching the back side out of his mouth._

_With a grateful gasp of air, Sam came up, his image reappearing in the broken mirror like a head surfacing above water. Sweat ran down the sides of his face and mingled with the tears as he took huge shuddering breaths... what in hell had just happened?_

_"Hey," came a voice, familiar, Dean's? But he couldn't look up, his body was still practically doubled over, coughing._

_"Hey man, you allright?" it came again, a hand grasping his forearm firmly._

_"Yeah..." he gurgled, standing up slowly and shakily, and turning towards the man, "I'm just fi-"_

_**"You won't be for long..."** came a raspy reply, and his eyes widened taking in, not his brother, but a small girl in a tattered, dirty white dress, long dark hair covering her face and a slimy hand holding his arm with bonecrushing strength, **"Four days..."**_

-

With a yell, Sam sat up in bed. _A dream?_ he wondered, his mind reeling, head spinning, _A fucking dream?_. In a moment he realized that this being a dream was in fact a very good thing... throwing up gigantic centipedes was definitely not a normal everyday occurrence.

Still breathing heavily, he looked over at Dean, still obliviously asleep in the next bed over, the dim green light of the clock's numbers, reading 3:12 AM, washing over him. With a long sigh, he fell back on his pillow. _Just a dream..._ he tried to calm himself, _Nothing... not cursed... just a..._ he stopped after having slid his arms beneath the pillow. Something felt... a little wierd...

Sitting back up again slowly, he held out his arm in front of him, trying to examine it, but the lighting was too dark. With a frown, he reached out and turned the light over his bed on at it's most dim, and held his arm up to it, turning it slowly to the side.

His eyes went wide at the sight... burned into his skin was a small handprint, grasping just where it had in the dream.

A bolt of panic shot through him. Sam leapt out of bed, a careless stroke of his hand knocking the little notebook he carried off the nightstand. His feet found their way into his shoes, and then out the door. It closed behind him with a slam.

-

Dean awoke to a loud sound. Blearily, he looked to the door, was that where it had come from? Out the window he saw a figure moving quickly, away from the door and down toward the street.

"Sam?" he whispered, still squinting in the dark. He glanced over to his left, and the bed there was empty.

"What the hell?" he quickly sat up, throwing the blankets off, "Sam!"

Bare-chested, and wearing only sweatpants, he had no time to get dressed or even put on shoes, before he followed his brother, or else he'd get away. In his hurry, bare feet touched the floor beside the bed, and something crinkled beneath them. Curiously, he looked down.

Beneath his left foot was the small book Sam had recently been keeping with him, pages open, some small folded papers scattered out of it. He bent, and picked it up, staring at it curiously. Momentarily distracted, he opened it to the front where the obituaries were all glued. His eyes widened marginally...

Every face of every picture of _every_ article had been scratched out, drawn on with pen until there was nothing more than a black blot instead of a person smiling. He flipped through a few more pages, and they were all the same. Leafing to the end, there were a few hastily scribbled notes, messy and unintelligible, mostly, he figured, because they had been written in a car. But even these faded away, and beyond them the rest of the journal was filled up with more black scribbles, circular patterns, rings...

His hands clenched around the book for a moment before he threw it down on his brothers bed, and stormed out of the room, glancing around in the night. "Sammy..." he hissed.

His eyes finally landed on a lone figure, the only person out this late at night. Tall, lean, standing in place and facing away... the Hotel they were staying in was out of the way, and very much in the middle of nowhere. Right across the street was an old quarry, with steep rock walls and a deep lake down below.

"Sam!" he called, breaking into a run...

-

He stood with his toes at the very edge, blank-eyed, looking down at the dark water, rippling red in the light of the unusual blood moon. His hands were at his sides, hovering just a little ways away from his legs where they'd usually rest. His body was tense, erect, and poised to jump.

"Sam!" came a frantic yell, and with a blink, he looked up confused. How did he get here? Hadn't he just been... in the hotel? When had his dream ended and consciousness begun? He looked around, and wide-eyed, took a step back away from the ledge.

"Sam!" was that call again, but much closer, and breathless. A hand closed around his forearm, and that touched a panic button.

An image of his dream flashed into his mind. The hand grey and the skin sagging and loose. With a cry, Sam sidestepped from the thing that was holding onto him, batting at the arm, and jerking his own out of reach.

"Sam, calm down!" came the befuddled voice, still Dean's.

Breathing heavily, he looked up from his arm, and stared at his brother... still his brother. He swallowed, and took another breath, "Dean..."

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" he stepped forward and demanded furiously. "I'm tryin' to help, what the fuck were you thinking leaving in the middle of the night and coming out here!" he motioned to the dropoff beyond the rocky ledge, leading to the water at least fifty feet below, "_Here!_"

Sam looked at it, apparently pondering the cliff for a moment, and the water below. "It's like... in the tape..." he muttered.

"I swear to god, Sam, if you start talking about that fucking tape again..."

"No, Dean, this is serious." he stated, taking a step forward, "It's serious, and it's real."

"It's driving you nuts, man." Dean protested, "I saw your book, and what you did to all those pictures, all your freaky little drawings. You're taking this thing _way_ to far!"

"It's REAL, Dean!" Sam yelled, forcefully pushing him back, and holding up his left arm, "Tell me you can't see this." he hissed, indicating the red hand-shaped burn. "I had another dream tonight..." he began, "...that this happened, and a bunch of other shit that happened in the tape before."

Dean stared disbelievingly at the mark, gently reaching forward for Sam's arm to get a better look, but Sam pulled it away.

"Then I... I don't know why... I came out here... it was like I was in a trance. It's real, and I'm cursed." he said shakily.

Dean bit his lip for a moment, still staring at the handprint on his brother, then looked back up to his face, and swallowed. "How long?"

Sam glanced down at the ground and sighed. Dean stepped forward with an expression of worry as his brother turned his gaze back up, and a dark red liquid began to seep out of his nostrils. "Four days."


	5. Chapter 5

They had left promptly after the 'incident' that night, Dean dragging Sam back to the hotel, throwing a few things to carry at him, and climbing into the car. At the moment, they were speeding down a highway back to Washington. Dean was still barefoot, and wearing nothing on his upper-half but an unbuttoned leather jacket, Sam reclined in the passenger's chair, his head tilted back and a tissue held over his nose, while with his right hand he was typing away at his laptop.

"Where do we go?" Dean asked demandingly.

"Hang on, I'm checking..." Sam said, remaining calm. "I pulled a bunch of old news reports for similar occurrences, you know, with the bodies being distorted and... yeah..." he trailed off, still straining to both look at the screen and tilt his head up at the same time. "Before this, the biggest outbreak, there were two others. The first one in Seattle Washington, the second a little less than a year later in a small town called Astoria in Oregon."

"Small town first." Dean said, knowing from years of experience how much easier hunting was when there weren't thousands of people around, and you had the benefit of suspicious country people, "It's closer."

Sam nodded, "I'm trying to get more information on that now. As far as I know, other than having the outbreaks of curse-related deaths, those two places have nothing to do with the tape."

"How do you know that?" Dean asked, puzzled, "That makes no sense..."

"It does, though. Even though the tapes were there, they have nothing to do with... with the images on the video."

"We're looking for places _in_ the tape?" Dean asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Well, yeah..." Sam muttered, as if this were obvious, "If this spirit's killing people after they watch it, it's got to have some significance to her."

"Wait, spirit? Her? When did the dead chick enter into this?"

A heavy sigh escaped the younger's lips, "It's a curse, right? Curses have to be... set in place by things. And there's this... this girl that I keep seeing..." he shook his head slowly, "She wasn't in the tape for long... maybe just... just once, I think. But in my dream tonight, she was..." he trailed of.

Dean glanced at him after a moment, "Was what?"

"Was there."

A silence lapsed for a little while, before Dean piped up again.

"So where are we headed now?"

"Just keep going North..." Sam murmured, "I'm looking."

Dean sighed, "Okay, but you take much longer and we're pretty much going to have to forget Astoria. We're almost back into Washington."

"That's allright."

Not long later, after Sam had finally been able to relinquish his nose from the tissue, andhad gone back to staring at the screen properly."Oh, you've got to be kidding me..."

Dean glanced over, carefully observing his brother's face, shadowed strangely, and looking sickly pale in the washed-out white light from his laptop, "What?"

"This... this site..." he breathed, turning the screen slightly to reveal a white ring on a dark background, "It's devoted to the tape."

"Well, that's a good thing, right?" Dean asked.

"Maybe, yeah..." Sam murmured, scrolling down, "But... but it's like a freaking _cult_. From what I can tell so far it's just groups of kids who... who get together to watch it... they document all they see like it's some kind of trip." he shook his head.

"Keep it, Sam. Could be useful."

He sighed. "Maybe..."

More silence. The sun was coming up to their right, the golden light spilling over the grey, rainwashed land. The day was spent with Dean driving determinedly, stopping only once to refill the quickly waning gas supply. His eyes drooped constantly, but he forced himself awake... glancing over at his brother for support.

No words needed to be said... just one look at the expression of concentration on the man's face. One glance at the burn on his arm, and he was rejuvenated again, at least slightly. Sam had to research this thing, so he couldn't trade off to him to drive. He was always better at research anyway... probably why he did so well in college.

"I got it." Sam said at about 10 AM, with a triumphant grin, "You were right. That cult-site really did come in handy..." he sighed with relief.

"You know how to stop this curse for yourself?" Dean asked, the beginnings of a relieved smile starting across his lips.

"No..." Sam sighed, "...but at the very least it's a clue to this spirit's origins."

Dean gave him an odd look, and opened his mouth as if about to say something.

"But just think of what that could mean." Sam interrupted quickly, "We get rid of the spirit, that means we can stop the curse for everyone, not just me."

"Okay..." Dean muttered, "I suppose that's best after all. What'cha got?"

"It's a name. Anna Morgan..." he muttered, "And the person posted a picture of her... sure enough, same lady as in the tape, the one brushing her hair in the mirror, and diving off the cliff."

He nodded to show he was still listening, "Is that the same as our creepy-white-dress-girl?" he asked in a moment.

"Actually, I don't think so..." Sam frowned marginally, "I don't know who she is yet, but she's not even in the tape much. Might not be all that important after all."

"You're saying the kid who melted part of your arm isn't important?"

"She didn't melt it..." said Sam, glancing down at the scar quickly.

"That's not the point... with this thing you want to investigate every option."

He sighed, "I got it."

A momentary silence followed, before Dean continued, "So what've you got on this Morgan girl?"

"I'm looking that up now..." Sam murmured in a moment. "Ahm... horse breeder, something to do with a historical society..." he paused for a moment then, appeared to examine the screen more closely.

"What is it now?" Dean pressed.

"Nothing... Nothing, just..." clicketty-click-click, Sam was typing something else in... In a moment, he once again smiled, "Bingo. More images from the tape."

"Like what?"

"A lighthouse... apparently one Anna helped restore. And her horses, dead, their bodies washed up on the beach. The lighthouse is in the background."

"You saw all that?"

Sam looked up, and nodded. Dean just shook his head.

-

"Allright, I'm sorry man, but I just can't do it." said Dean.

"What?" Sam looked up, worried and confused.

"At this rate, I'm going to drive us off the road. I've gotta crash."

"I can drive for a while..." he muttered.

"No." Dean said quickly, "You need to be working on finding out about this thing."

"Dean, I've been doing that for the last eight hours..."

Dean hit the brakes hard, and with a gasp, Sam was sent forward, almost all the way into the dashboard, before he was held back by the seatbelt going taut around his body, digging in with a sharp pain at it's suddenness. He fumbled the laptop slightly, but managed to keep it from falling off his lap entirely.

"What the hell was that for!" he almost yelled as soon as they were at a complete stop, and had both sufficiently rested back.

Dean looked over to him with that sly gleam in his eyes, and grinned, "Saw a place to stop." Sam replied with a confused expression, to which Dean motioned a hand out the window.

Looking up, a weather-battered sign was visible through the low-hanging branches of the trees, reading: Shelter Mountain Inn.

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Fixed various geographical errors... got up the motivation to google some maps, do some math... yeah. To be honest to you all, I have _no_ idea what I'm doing. XD I've already written everything I had planned out... all I have left planned is the end... and nothing on the way from here to there. I'm notorious for making significant changes to fics after I've already posted the chapters, so come back to this one every once in a while, guys, you may find it's changed slightly. Other than that... hope you like. This was kind of a boring one. Not to write, of course... but lots of conversation. Maybe to read. Yeah, I'm done now.

Oh, P.S. The 'cult'-site that Sam talks about finding can be seen in the extra short-film 'Rings' in the special features section of The Ring Two.


	6. Chapter 6

"Can I help you sirs?"

"Uh, yeah... we just need a place to stay for a little while... probably not even the whole day." Dean glanced at Sam, "Well, maybe... but for right now I just need to catch some z's."

The man in the lobby smiled, "Well, that's what we're here for. Cash or credit?"

Dean opened up his wallet and handed over a little card, which was quickly taken and brought over into the next room.

Shifting back and forth, Dean eventually looked up at his brother. "Hey, you allright?"

Sam glanced at him from where he'd been staring out a window, "Oh yeah, just... this place gives me a weird feeling."

This was replied to with an eyeroll, making Sam frown. The man came back a moment later with Dean's credit card, "Okay, here you go, you'll be in cabin eleven."

"Thanks."

-

"I didn't expect a hike through the forest." mumbled a grumpy, tired Dean ten minutes later, speaking to an unintentionally amused Sam.

"It's a cabin, you expected them to be all neatly next to eachother? Especially out here..." he motioned to the surrounding woods, "...in the middle of nowhere." They'd been following a trail of small, oddly placed buildings as their numbers increased from one to ten, the one they'd just passed.

Dean just gave an exasperated sigh. "Finally... I think that's it." he pointed ahead at a little house-like thing, moss-covered and creaky, nestled in among the trees. Sam looked it over and frowned a little. Looked more like an abandoned shack than someplace to sleep. He hoped there wasn't as much plantlife indoors as there was covering it outside.

"Allright, first piece of furniture I see, I'm gonna collapse on..." Dean quickened his pace to a light jog as he approached it.

"Hey, wait..."

"Aw, come on now, Sammy, what is it?" Dean turned around an impatient scowl on his face.

"I think I..." Sam was moving off to one side, staring curiously at what was just beyond the end of the treeline.

"C'mon, it's like five-o-clock..." said Dean, checking his watch, "At this rate, I'll wake up refreshed the same time we left this morning. Which in case you don't remember, was 3AM!" he began to shout.

Sam was silent, moving past the building toward the treeline. The sun was setting behind a far-off hill, a silver disc behind the light cloudcover. And as he drew nearer, and finally came out into a clearing, it passed behind a lone tree standing on the hill. The blood-red leaves of the Japanese Maple acted like a filter for the light, and at that moment it seemed like red flame swept across the dewy grass.

"Ah..." Sam winced, a hand rising over his eyes as an image throbbed in his mind like a migraine, burning itself into him... a sketched tree with shadow branches, and bright flame leaves... He looked up again. "This is the spot..."

"What spot?" Dean's weary voice came from not far behind him, "What're you talking about."

"This... this tree was in the tape too..." he looked back, pointing.

"Yeah, sure. You need a _nap_ too, now come on, you've been up as long as I have."

"But... I'm sure of it..." he muttered, looking around the clearing a little more. The light was already passing away, and as the greyness settled back in, even that gave him a feeling of familiarity. His eyes wandered over to another small cabin, numbered 12, the next in the sequence. He quirked his head to one side slightly... a couple wooden posts, looking quite out of place, were sticking out of the wet ground, and a scrap of faded yellow plastic that looked suspiciously like police tape.

"Something's here." he said decisively, chewing his lower lip slightly as he started forward.

"Come on..." Dean groaned softly, grudgingly following.

The rotted wooden steps creaked beneath Sam's feet as he climbed up them and onto the porch. A sign was posted on the door, plain paper eaten away by a leak above it, and smudged blue sharpie reading: 'Closed For Repairs'. Sam extended a hand slowly, and pushed on the door, finding it to easily swing open past a broken frame normally meant to hold it shut.

In key with the decrepit outside appearance, the inside was just as bad... quite a long time of disuse, and neglect had left a musty smell, and water-damaged walls and floorboards. Sam stopped just inside, catching sight of another, much more obvious problem with the floorboards. They weren't there.

A circular hole had been haphazardly cut into the ground. Frowning in confusion, he proceeded cautiously towards it.

"What is it?" asked Dean, a moment later poking his head in.

"Shit!"

"What?"

"It's the well!" Sam pointed wildly back at the hole in the ground, as he quickly backed away towards Dean, coming to stop on the opposite wall.

"The what, Sammy?"

"The well! The well I saw in the tape it's... it's right _here_!"

"Under the house?" Dean came in, confused. His footsteps thudded loudly across the hollow floor as he approached the hole, and peered in. Sam was breathing slightly heavily, and pinned up against the far wall. He looked up hopefully as his brother turned his head back toward him, "Yup, that's a well allright."

"Come on, Dean..." he stepped forward. "That's why... that's why those were in the tape, the tree was in there so we could find this here, and..." he looked down again, "But it's open..." he murmured. "In the... in the tape it was closed..."

"Yeah, they should really put a cover on that again." Dean mused, "Could be a hazard to any idiot who walks in here when there's a sign telling you not to posted on the door." he watched his brother pointedly, gesturing to the still-open front door of the cabin.

"Dean, it was really important that we found this..." he murmured.

"Why?"

"Why? So we can..." he trailed off, "...something happened here. There was police tape outside, and this hole in the floor isn't here for nothing..." he murmured.

"Allright, that's nice Sammy. Now come on, can we please get back to _our_ cabin, that _I_ played for so_I_ could _sleep_ in?" he sighed frustratedly, turning once again towards the door. Sam grudgingly obliged, looking over his shoulder at the well as he left. "I mean that's what we came here for..." Dean continued, "While I rest you can... do whatever it is that you do on your laptop. Now you need to be getting some sleep eventually too, but since this is all for a good cause... and I'm trusting that you're not just looking up porn..."

"Dean!"

He laughed, "Aw, come on... that's what I would do." he said with a grin, walking down the steps on the porch again, letting the door swing, and slam loudly shut behind him.

"What _you_ would do..." Sam said under his breath, continuing out across the ground.

-

It didn't take long for Dean to pass out once they were inside their own rented cabin, and likewise it didn't take long to find out all they needed to know about Cabin 12 and the well. Sam had sat down on the couch, a pillow on his legs, and beneath his laptop. Dean had sat down next to him to watch him do his work for a little while, but as it turned out, he'd taken over the pillow in Sam's lap after falling asleep, and the laptop was moved to the arm of the sofa.

The wonders of google provided a very well documented incident with no more work done than simply typing in 'Shelter Mountain' in the search bar. Sam smiled triumphantly after gaining all this new knowledge, and set about working it out in his head, or on his notebook.

_Body found at the bottom of the well in Cabin 12 at Shelter Mountain, a little over a year ago._ his pen fervently scribbled out on a page only slightly taken up by ring drawings. _Belonged to Samara Morgan, daughter of Anna Morgan._ he drew a line with an arrow between the two names. _Discovered by Rachael Keller, reporter doing research on the old mystery of the Morgan Ranch for the Seattle newspaper._

He nibbled at the pen cap thoughtfully, looking down at this. _Mystery of the Morgan Ranch? Haven't heard of that one..._ he thought, eyes scanning around his messy little page. _Rachael Keller... why would she be pursuing a story like that right out of the blue?_

More google. God he loved that site. The mystery proved to be nothing more than strange deaths of the horses at the ranch. All descriptions said that they'd gone mad, and begun throwing themselves over cliffs. That matched up well with the morbid image of horse bodies half-buried in sand by the seashore... And then the suicide of Anna Morgan. Turned out that the tape was once again most accurate. She had, in fact, taken a dive off of a cliff. Her daughter too, this Samara, was an enigma. She was seldom mentioned, except for in one article which suggested that she'd been murdered by her own mother during one of the family's yearly vacations to Shelter Mountain. That explained why she was found there.

Sam sighed, leaning back on the couch and rubbing his eyes tiredly. He wished Dean hadn't fallen asleep with his head on the pillow in his lap, then at least he could lie down to rest... it looked like they'd need to do some more research the hard way. There were some things that even google didn't tell you.

"One last thing before bed..." he muttered, slapping the side of his face gently, and shaking his head to wake himself up. Google once more, typing in 'Rachael Keller'. "She can help..." he murmured to himself. "If she knows any more about it..." he scrolled down the page, "Where are you, Rachael?"

His eyes widened marginally. "Seattle... then Astoria..." he murmured. "Could be just a coincidence… but in this job…" he smirked a little. "No coincidence. The curse followed her."

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Yay for Rachael. Once again, another chapter written without much idea of where I'm gonna go with the story. Not sure how big of a character Rachael will be. I wanted to keep her a fairly small role. I don't think she'd want to get re-involved with this whole Ring-thing again. But we'll see. Yes, we shall see.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy:** First thing's first. The poem you'll read in this chapter is not mine, and technically I don't even have the author's permission to use it, but I'd like to credit a girl named Laura with it. As of now I have no way of contacting her to ask for permission, but so long as you know it's not mine... I only wish my skills were half of hers. This chapter took a liiiiittle bit longer to finish than the others. I had to rework my outline with the plot, and now I finally think I'm back on track, and know what I'm doing. It's been hectic for me, I'm preparing for a long vacation. I'll be gone for two whole weeks, and I was trying to get this chapter out to tell all of you... anyone who reads, please don't go away and stop checking up on this fic if I don't update for a while, I will be back at the end, refreshed, and ready to continue! This said, enjoy!

---

"Where to now, Sammy?" Dean asked, refreshed, and climbing back into the car the next morning.

Sam sighed, and got in the passenger's side of the car. "Moesko Island." he muttered.

"Say what?"

"It's this little spit of land off the coast near Seattle... we're practically there already." he explained.

"Allright." Dean started the engine, and headed out. Back on the road, he turned toward his brother. "You sleep allright?" he asked curiously, "You still looked tired."

"Yeah. No nightmares this time, but I got to bed late after doing research." he said, glancing out the window.

"Allright. I'm gonna humor you..." Dean smirked, turning back toward the road, "What'd you find out? And why're we headed into the middle of nowhere."

"The island is where that lady Anna Morgan lived. Remember, the woman I told you about yesterday?" Dean nodded, "I'm thinking we can visit her old house. It's supposedly abandoned, they tried to sell it, but nobody was ever interested."

"Is there a ferry?" Dean asked, "How're we going to get there?"

"Yeah, there's a ferry. But it only runs once a day, we're going to have to spend the night..."

"We're running out of time, you know..." The elder muttered darkly, "It's Friday. You watched that thing, what, Sunday night?"

"Technically it was Monday morning..." Sam breathed.

"Yeah, whatever... all I'm saying is this had better have something decent we can find out from going there, or else you're screwed, man."

-

A dim, washed out sun hung in the hazy sky as gale winds pushed blindingly white clouds around. Dean, restless, was wandering around the little boat, while Sam hung back in the car, typing along on his laptop, trying to find out more about Rachael...

As the boat drew to a slow stop, Dean climbed back into the driver's seat. "We're here." he smiled, and glanced over at the laptop, "Hel-lo, what's that, Sammy? She wasn't on the tape, was she?" he gave his brother a knowing grin.

Sam sent him a look, "No, she wasn't... but I think she might be some help to us..."

Dean raised an eyebrow.

"Her name is Rachael Keller, she's been involved with this tape curse for over a year now..." he explained, "She might know some valuable information about it. We should try and get into contact with her after we're done here." he said with a nod.

"Whatever you say."

-

Car doors slammed outside the gate barring the driveway up to the Morgan Ranch. Dean got out and looked up the dirt road toward the building.

"Well, it looks like somebody doesn't want us to get in..." he murmured, glancing at Sam as the man climbed up and swung a leg over the fence, hopping to the other side, and heading toward it. "Wait up."

The two proceeded toward the house, Dean hurrying a little to catch up with his determined brother, "So what are we hoping to find here?" he asked.

"I don't know... anything, there's got to be something here that'll point us in the right direction."

"You should've mentioned that blonde chick earlier, I'd choose her over a creepy mansion any day." Dean muttered, "Besides, we're stranded here for another day, you said. And this thing's got a time limit at your expense."

Sam shook his head, "We'll get to her tomorrow." he whispered, walking to the front door. It swung open with a gentle touch, and the two went inside.

"Well..." Dean said after a few minutes of aimless wandering around, "Did you expect them to sell a place like this furnished? They probably cleared everything out of here. There's nothing left for us to find."

Sam sighed frustratedly, running a hand through his hair, "Allright, ahm..." he shook his head, "You... check out the basement, I'll go look in the barn." he shrugged, "Okay?"

"Gotcha."

-

Descending the stairs, Dean gave a short sigh. This detour was getting them nowhere fast... and potentially wasting another day of Sam's apparently short remaining lifespan. He looked around, finding nothing blaringly obvious that struck him. A bunch of boxes, a lot of junk, a creepy collection of antlers in a pile at one corner and hanging off the ceiling above it...

He whistled, and went the other way. Even he was getting an eerie tingling on the back of his neck just being here, and usually Sam was the one known for that. _Nothing... nothing..._ he passed dusty boxes, some labeled as Christmas decorations and whatnot, _Whole lotta nothing..._ this was getting tiresome. He headed back for the stairs to tell Sam they'd better get out of here, when he stopped.

A single beam of white sunlight filtering through a dirt-encrusted window glinted off of something. He turned around.

Half-shoved in a box was a silver-framed oval mirror. He raised an eyebrow, the image striking something in his memory.

_Woman brushing her hair in a mirror?_ he wondered, picking it up and raising it to look at his own reflection. He smiled and winked at himself, then shook his head, and tucked it under an arm, going back up.

-

The ground was still dirty and covered in bits of hay as Sam walked through the doors of the barn, and looked around. Empty horse stalls lined the walls of the hallway leading up to a larger, open area.

Coming out into this, he looked up, a familiar image striking something in his mind. A red ladder leaning on a wall. _It was in the tape..._ he thought, slowly approaching it, and looking up. The ladder led to a house-shaped alcove, high-up in the far wall. With a creased eyebrow, he reached forward, grabbing ahold of the worn rungs, and pulling himself up.

Immediately visible on the far wall, through torn horse-wallpaper, Sam's eyes widened at the sight of the burning tree... the same red flame engulfing the dark branches, charcoal black as if they had been literally burned into the wood of the barn.

He swallowed, and looked around. The room was barren, but showed hints of its original use... an eerily familiar chair in the right corner, beside a rocking horse. A small bed frame on the left side, about the right size for a little girl... a few shreds of pink fabric stuck to the sharp metal edges.

"Hey Sam!"

He turned around and looked down. Dean was coming in the doors of the barn, looking around without noticing him.

"Up here." he called.

Dean looked up, at first a little confused, then grinning slightly, "Look what I've got." he said, holding out the mirror,

"It's heavy..." he added.

Sam looked down at it grimly, recognition of the object coming quick, "Put it away..." he said softly, turning.

His brother shrugged, and set it down at his feet, hurrying forward and climbing the ladder up to the top, "What've we got up here?" he asked, looking around.

"Samara's room." Sam said, looking at the bed.

"She _slept_ up here?" Dean asked, confused, "In the barn, with the horses? God, it must've gotten cold in winter."

Sam sighed quietly, unable to stop a smirk as he glanced at his brother. "It makes sense, doesn't it? There weren't any other bedrooms in the house, besides the master bedroom... and why else would there be..." he motioned to the rocking horse, and the tree.

"Creepy little girl..." Dean stepped forward to more closely examine the image, halfway there, a floorboard creaked, cracked, and gave way. With a gasp, the man fell to his knees on the floor and looked down.

"Dean!" Sam spun, looking worried. His worry faded slightly seeing that he hadn't fallen to the floor below, or something more dramatic like that. "You allright?" he asked, walking over, and offering a hand up.

"Yeah, yeah, fine..." he grumbled, "Worst possible is that I twisted my ankle..." he winced slightly after taking the hand, and pulling his leg out of the small hole, "Or a few splinters..." he looked at some new tears on his jeans. Didn't even break through to the lower level." he reported, stumbling away.

Sam knelt down, examining the floorboard a little skeptically. It was loose... and not from Dean's breaking it. With a frown, he lifted it away.

"What're you doing?" his brother asked, watching, confused.

"There's something in here..." he murmured, sitting down and reaching in to pull it out.

A pink-cloth covered little book with small, tasteful lace frills lining it was in his hand.

Dean laughed. "What the hell is that?" he asked, amused.

Sam took in the thing curiously, turning it over in his hands before opening it. "Her diary..."

"You sure you should be looking in that thing." Dean stumbled over, favoring his leg just slightly, "Creepy girl's diary, she might make this whole curse thing personal if you read all about her deep dark secrets." he added with a small laugh.

The warning was disregarded as he flipped it open, revealing a few pen-sketches of familiar images, rings, trees, flies, horses...

_'Dear Diary, Daddy's moved my things up here in the barn after Mommy got sick. It's cold, and I'm all alone... with the horses. I don't like the horses, they're loud, and they don't like me. I hope Mommy gets better. I can't help that I made her sick. She wouldn't let Daddy keep me up here if she was home again. Love Samara.'_

_'Dear Diary, I went to see a doctor today. I don't like him. He thinks I did the things I did to Mommy on purpose. But I didn't! And he doesn't believe me when I tell him about the things I can do. I wish I could show him... Love Samara.'_

"Man, she's smart for a twelve-year-old." Dean remarked, now seated beside his brother, and reading over his shoulder.

"We don't know how old she is." Sam muttered.

"Sam, she still uses 'Mommy' and 'Daddy', how old can she be?"

"We can't gauge it on that. She's a pretty messed up kid."

"I'll say."

He turned the page.

_'I wrote this:  
__Come forth from the tomb,  
__but the door was sealed.  
__With these bandaged hands,  
__never to be healed.  
__Clawing at the walls,  
__I can't even feel  
__my fingers breaking  
__against stone strong steel.  
__The air's so thin.  
__Not a hint of light.  
__My head starts to spin.  
__Breathing is such a fight.  
__Sinking to the floor,  
__my last dwindling thought  
__"Funny to be resurrected  
__When the door was locked"_

_I think that is what will happen to me. I've seen it, like I see the other things. And whenever I see something, it happens. They'll try to hurt me, but they can't. I'll live, but I'll be stuck... I have to stop it, but I don't think I can._

_Here we go, the world is spinning,  
__when it stops, it's just beginning.  
__Sun comes out, and we all laugh.  
__Sun goes down, and we all die._

_Love Samara'_

"..." the two of them just stared silently at the page.

"Come on, man... definitely _not_ a twelve-year-old." Dean whispered.

"We have to know more about her." Sam swallowed. "That last verse was in the tape... she was singing it." he looked up.

"It's getting dark."Dean said, "We've gotta go get a place to stay, and there's no way in hell we're camping out anywhere near here."

"I want to go look in the basement." Sam stood, pocketing the small book, and moved toward the ladder.

"What? Sam, I already looked in there."he said, frowning, and following.

"I want to look again." he was already halfway down, and glanced over his shoulder after a few more steps, sighing, and impatiently jumping to the bottom.

"Sam!" Dean quickly followed, as the man, once more outside, determinedly made for the house again.

-

In the basement, Sam rooted around with more fervor and interest than Dean had before, disregarding the antlers, and opening, even sometimes upturning boxes. He stopped in front of a small shelf with an old TV sitting on it. The TV was attached to a VCR, and a tape stuck halfway out of this. Pausing before it, he slowly knelt down and looked it over carefully.

"Oh, god no, Sammy, no more tapes..." Dean grumbled, hurrying over.

Sam turned, and looked at him sternly, holding out an arm to signal him to stay back. "If this is what I think it is, I want you out of here before you see any of it. Allright?"

"Sammy..."

Sam turned around, and pushed the tape in, clicking the TV on.

_A white room appeared on the screen, with a little girl sitting on a bed, staring down at the floor, her dark hair falling all in front of her face as her legs swung off the edge of the bed, not touching the floor._

Sam heaved a sigh of relief, then beckoned Dean over to stay. The man obeyed, taking a seat next to his brother, and watching. Obviously, this wasn't _the_ tape.

_On the wall behind the girl was a clock... the image was sped up, because the clock's hands were spinning, hours passing without the girl looking as if she had so much as breathed. She stood up for a moment, to look at another wall, then sat back down, time still silently flying by. _

_Soon, she'd moved once more, shifting from foot to foot in front of the exit to the small, boxlike room, staring up at the clock as the hours passed. Breathing heavily, she stood at the foot of the bed, looking sadly away. Quickly, because the film was still running fast, the explored around her small room, before stopping near the center, staring up directly at the camera with an accusing glare. _

_The image changed, a hand was holding up a strange paper, and it's owner said in a bored tone: "Session 0015, Samara Morgan..." a few images of the girl being hooked up to various devices. Then the edge of a table, a man sitting off to the left, a glass of water... in the center of the room sat the little girl, silent in a simple chair, staring off to the right, her hair hiding her face as usual._

_"So what is it that's keeping you awake? You must sleep sometime..." came that same voice. "Do you dream about something?" _

_A pause, "Samara?"_

_"Let's talk about the pictures." he reached over to a pile of papers in front of him, and began to shuffle through some images that looked like X-rays. He held up a sheet, a skeletal rocking horse with a foreground of water, and a ring. "How did you make them?"_

_"Samara?" He looked at another picture, a little lizard surrounded by jax. "How did you make these pictures?"_

_After a short silence, the little girl's voice, "I don't... make them I... see them. And then... they just... are."_

_"Samara, I need you to start telling me the truth." came the increasingly impatient voice of the doctor. "Okay?"_

_"Can I see my mommy?"_

_He sighed. "No, Samara. Not until we find out what's wrong with you."_

_"I love my mommy."_

_"Yes you do. But you don't want to hurt her anymore, now do you? You don't want to hurt anyone."_

_The girl looked up a little, "But I do, and I'm sorry... It won't stop."_

_"Well that's why you're here." said the doctor, a little more gently, "So that I can help you to make it stop." There was silence as he took a drink of water._

_"He's going to leave me here." said the girl darkly._

_"Who?"_

_"...daddy."_

_The doctor tried to reason, "They just want to help you."_

_"Not daddy." the girl almost hissed, her tone harboring some resentment as she spoke. _

_"Your daddy loves you." the doctor tried._

_"Daddy loves the horses. He wants me to go away."_

_"No he doesn't."_

_"But he doesn't know..." she almost seemed to smile, her voice taunting._

_"He doesn't know what?" A close shot of the girl as she stared down at her hands folded in her lap. "Samara?" She looked up. The screen was overtaken by static._


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Beginning Note Thingy:** Back by popular demand... well, no not really. XD I've just been getting a few messages of 'no, don't go on vacation and leave us without another chapter'! Okay, not really... but the fact is I have the time to write another chapter! Yaay!

Oh, and by the way... XP that cellphone number Sam gives... that's my cellphone number. XD You'd need the areacode to call me, but... nobody would do that... right? I don't have any stalkers... shifty eyes.

Last thing, I promise… I have no idea where Silverdale Psychiatric, from The Ring Two actually is… it would make sense for it to be in Oregon, but there is supposedly a city of Silverdale up in Washington, so I just put it there. The place probably doesn't even exist, so unless you find proof of a hospital actually called that somewhere in these two states, you got nothing on me! Hahaha!

---

The dawn broke bright, cold, and early on Moesko Island. Sam and Dean had been put up in a small Bed and Breakfast, but had skipped the breakfast element to leave early and get to the ferry in time. The ride back was easy... Dean dozed along the way, Sam checked and rechecked on Rachael.

Once back on the mainland, an hour and a half to two hours of driving had brought them to a little town just outside Vancouver, on the very Southern border of the state.

"Two days left, Sammy, this trip had better be worth it." Dean said as they waited outside the door to what was hopefully the right apartment.

"Yeah, you don't have to remind me..." Sam said grimly.

In a moment, the door slowly opened, and a blonde woman looked out, apparently somewhat confused at their presence.

"Um, Hello?" she looked them over scrutinously, "If you're selling something..."

"No, no we're not..." Sam cut her off quickly.

"Then what are you here for?" she asked, still standing in the doorway.

Sam and Dean exchanged hopeful looks, as they always did when approaching someone, anyone, about their supernatural problems like this.

"We're here to ask you about... something that happened about a year ago, that we believe you were involved in." Sam began.

"I'm sorry, who did you say you were working for?" she said with a frown.

"Uh, no-one, ma'am." Dean broke in with a scowl of his own.

She sent him a small glare, then turned back to Sam, the nicer one.

Sam sighed at his brother, and turned back to her, "You're Rachael Keller, right?"

She nodded.

Sam gave a small sigh of relief, "Well it's good to know we're at the right place. Well... we're here to ask you about... a certain videotape."

Recognition flared across her face. "No." she said shaking her head. Sam stared at her, a little befuddled.

"No?"

"No." she repeated again, "No, no _way_ I am having anything to do with that again. Ever again." she began to close the door. Dean stepped forward and placed a hand on it to keep it from closing fully, and she glared sternly back, "I can call the police on you..." she said in a soft voice. "Listen, you get off my doorstep, and you never come back or have anything to do with me and my family again, allright? You're not bringing that curse back here." she swallowed.

"And we're not trying to..." pleaded Sam quietly, "Look, will you just hear us out?"

She looked at him, "About what?"

"About this tape." he chewed his lower lip slightly, "We're trying to stop it, and I don't just mean for me..." he trailed off, then looked down and sighed, rolling up a sleeve to reveal the burn-mark on his arm, "But for everyone. For good."

She laughed bitterly, "You can't stop Samara..." she said, shaking her head.

"Well, we're going to try." said Dean, looking back at Sam.

Rachael just stood there in the doorway, a hand over her face, softly laughing. Nowhere... was there _nowhere_ she could go that that bitch wouldn't find her? She heaved a sigh, her shoulders still shaking.

Dean grit his teeth slightly at her almost-hysterics, and pushed the door open a little more, "Listen, lady. We're not asking for your active participation. My brother's got some ghost-kid out for his blood, and you're the only link to her we've got left before we're out of ideas, except for him to just lay down and die." he stopped a moment, Rachael herself looking up silently, staring with blank eyes across the room.

"Dean..." Sam said softly, defeat in his tone.

He was ignored, "So anything, _anything_ you can do..." Dean was practically begging now, "Other than just leave us with a 'sorry, but good luck'... would be just fine."

Rachael was silent, staring away, blinking... a hand covered her mouth as she thought, and considered. In a moment she turned back to them, taking a deep breath, "Do you two... nuts... really think you have a chance at really stopping her? For good?"

Dean flashed a quick grin, "It's what we do for a living."

She looked down at the ground and shook her head, "Allright... come on in, I'll see what I can give you." she walked away from the door, and beckoned them to follow.

Relief swept over Sam as he followed his brother in, sending him a truly thankful look after Dean glanced back at him. As Rachael disappeared down a small hallway, they closed the door softly behind them, and looked around the apartment.

A simple place, tasteful. Warm salmony-pink curtains were drawn closed over a large window. A small couch sat on the same wall as the door, and a livingroom area was enclosed with bookshelves, made separate from the kitchen space on the other side of the same room. Notably... there was no television, and no phone, save a small cellphone lying on the kitchen counter.

Dean smirked, and looked at Sam, "Can ya tell what she's afraid of?" he asked quietly.

"I wouldn't blame her. She's had two run-ins with this tape, and it's screwed her life up both times." he explained softly, "Makes sense that she wouldn't want to deal with it again. I already feel bad coming here..."

Dean rolled his eyes slightly, but was silent as Rachael came back down the hallway.

"How did you see the tape?" she asked, slowly approaching them.

"I... I dreamt it." Sam said honestly.

She sent him a skeptical look, before glancing back down at something she was holding in her hands, "Guess dreams are not so safe after all..." she muttered.

"Sammy has this thing..." Dean began.

"Dean." he was cut off with a warning tone.

Rachael's interest was already perked, "A thing? What kind of thing?"

The two looked between one another. "Well, I suppose you've already heard of enough weird things in the world..." Dean started again, looking pointedly at his brother for a proper explanation. The woman smirked, and turned her attention toward him too.

Sam sighed, "I... it doesn't happen often, but I... sometimes dream, or... have visions of things... that are going to happen in the future." he explained, "I guess I was just... really sensitive to it, or something, but the night after Dean brought home the tape, I had a nightmare about what was on it..."

"Got the phone call, creepy girl, the whole thing." Dean glanced over at the cellphone on the counter, "You know, she can use those too."

Rachael frowned, "I know. But I can't be completely out of touch with the world..." she breathed, "So where is your copy of the tape now?"

"Destroyed it." Dean said a little triumphantly. This was replied to with another dark look.

"You're sure she's after you?" Rachael pressed again.

"Pretty damn sure."

Sam frowned... Rachael really didn't look happy. It was hard enough getting her cooperation in the first place. Dean really needed to stop talking.

The woman sighed. "Allright..." she murmured to herself, opening up the large book in her arms. "You need a copy of the tape with you. I'll give you mine..." she handed it over to Sam from where it had been tucked into the binding of the volume, and he nodded.

"Woah, wait..." Dean held up a hand, and looked over at it, "We don't want this cursed thing back any more than you do. And what're you doing with a copy of it anyway?"

"You need it." she snapped, "I have it just in case..."

Sam looked at her strangely, "Just in case what?"

She turned back to him and gave a soft reply, "In case something like this happens..." there was a silence for a moment, before she sighed, and handed over the book, "This was her mother's..."

"Anna Morgan's?" Sam asked, taking it gently, and looking over the cover.

"No. Her real mother's." Rachael looked up, for a moment observing the confused expression on their faces, "Samara was adopted."

"Thank you..." Sam said softly, and Rachael shook her head.

"Don't mention it. You'll probably need to take that to Silverdale Psychiatric, back up North…" she explained, walking away to the counter and reaching for her cellphone. "Ask for Evelyn." She flipped it open and held it up in front of herself. "Let me have your number..." she muttered.

Dean smiled, "Well, that would be 588 669-"

"Not you..." she looked up and sent a glare at Dean, before tentatively continuing on, "Sam..." she turned to him, "That's your name, right?"

He nodded, "669 0508." he said.

She typed the number in, and fiddled around with a few more buttons, before smiling marginally, "Thankyou." she said softly with a nod of the head, "For trying to finish this off for me. I can't get involved with it again..." she glanced down the hallway on the far side of the room, before turning back and making for the door, holding it open. "Good luck."

Sam nodded, and followed a slightly disgruntled Dean out of the apartment, before turning around and returning the smile to Rachael, "You too."

The door softly closed.

Rachael sighed, and lifted a hand to her face, leaning back on the door and sliding down it to the ground. "Not again..." she murmured to herself, as the footsteps on the other side of the door receded away. She swallowed, "How... how can they possibly stop her... when they don't even know..."

She glanced down the hall once more, towards Aiden's room. But he was still sleeping. "And they said that man sees things..." she continued whispering to herself, "That means he could be just like..." she stopped, "If she gets out again..."

She looked down at her cellphone, still clasped in a pale hand. Flipping it once again open, she searched through the menus to the saved pictures, particularly one she'd snapped when the two of them hadn't noticed she was photographing them. In it, Dean stood, clearly visible, looking clueless. She almost smirked at that. And next to him, Sam... blurry, fuzzy outline, face distorted.

"Oh..." she leaned forward, her head coming to rest on her knees, the cellphone sliding out of her hand and clattering on the floor, "He really is cursed..."


	9. Chapter 9

"I can't believe we're getting information from someone at a psych ward." Dean grumbled, pulling up into the parking lot of Silverdale Psychiatric a few hours later.

"From the girl's mother, Dean. We know for sure now that it's her whose curse this is, her own mother should be the best source..." Sam trailed off, beginning to get out. "You're just pissed because Rachael didn't like you." he grinned wryly, then shook his head again, "I don't blame her, you were pretty abrasive."

"_Abrasive_?" he protested, looking over at Sam.

He shrugged, "To someone in her position..."

Dean sighed and started in, "But seriously... she's her biological mother, that doesn't mean the girl even knew her at all. Adoptions are usually done at a young age. What could she know about Samara?"

"More than you're giving her credit for." Sam frowned, speaking more softly now that they were inside, and heading down the center of a wide open lobby area, towards a desk at the opposite side.

A large man sitting at the chair behind the desk looked up as they approached. "Can I help you?" he asked pleasantly, running a hand over his bald head as he reclined in the chair.

Sam stepped up, "We're looking for a woman named Evelyn... we think we've found something of hers..." he held up the book Rachael had given.

The man at the desk gave them both an odd look. "Evelyn? You sure?" he asked, beginning to stand up.

Sam glanced at Dean, then looked back with a quizzical expression, "Yeah..."

He shrugged, "Allright, you two... follow me." he motioned while walking down a side hallway. "You two don't have any... kids, do you?" he asked, giving them a skeptical look.

Dean returned this looking insulted, "No, man, it's not like that." he said quickly.

He held up his hands, "Not what I was saying. Just usually the people looking for Evelyn are..." he trailed off, giving a shrug as they continued down the hallway, to a lone room at the end.

A humming grew louder as they came closer, the only sound amidst the oppressive silence in the long white hallway. As their footsteps tapped closer and closer to the end, Sam began to look around, in search of the source of the sound.

When they stopped at the end, the man reached for the door with a jingling ring of keys, but halted seeing Sam, "Oh, you don't recognize that too, do you?" he said with an eyeroll, as if he'd seen it all before.

Sam watched him questioningly, "Yeah... I do."

The key turned in the lock, and the door clicked open. "Hello their Evelyn..." he said in a calming tone, "You have two visitors today. Pretty soon after the last ones, don't you think? And you didn't even see them coming." he glanced back at the brothers, and ushered them inside, closing the door after them.

There was a silence between them, as they both watched the woman, the perfect grandmotherly image, long dress, knitted sweater, hunched over a desk and working on something, all the while breathlessly humming that same tune.

Sam swallowed, "Evelyn?" he said softly, stepping up.

The woman stopped, and looked straight forward out an open window in front of her desk, before turning and looking over her shoulder, shaggy hair falling all about her face as she stared at him with unblinking, bloodshot eyes. "You're here..." she breathed.

He nodded, and held out the book, "I think... this belonged to you...?" he asked.

A look of recognition dawned on her face, and in a moment, she almost smiled, standing up and turning around, "Oh... that was for Samara..."

Sam flipped open to the first page, and sure enough, scrawled in scratchy cursive were written the words: For Samara.

"That's what I'm here for..." he murmured. "I need to know more about Samara."

"Samara..." she shuddered, "She never sleeps..."

Sam nodded, "I've heard that."

"The dead never sleep." she shook her head, and took a step toward him, watching expectantly.

"Samara is dead..."

"Samara was dead. Before she died."

"Aw, come _on_..." Dean rolled his eyes. Sam, too, glanced at him with a confused look.

"And she never sleeps. Because the dead never sleep."

"This is going in circles..." Dean shook his head, and turned around, facing the door, expecting to be able to leave soon.

"Why doesn't she sleep?" Sam tried. He'd never... dealt with a crazy person before. At least, not a living one.

"Because she is dead." he rolled his eyes in slight frustration, but Evelyn continued, "And the dead are always awake. Always watching..."

"Watching for what?"

She turned and looked up at him, her eyes, if possible, even wider than before as she took in his shape. She swallowed, "Watch for a way back in..." she took another step forward.

Sam sighed, and turned to Dean, "Possession. Samara is, was possessed by something... and now that she's dead she's doing the same as what happened to her."

"How do they get back in?" Dean asked, turning and facing the woman now, "Is it through the tape."

She shook her head quickly, "No... no, no, no..."

"Then how?" Dean said, a little more loudly, stepping forward.

"Dean, don't push her..." Sam held a hand out in front of him, his voice calm.

"Nensha..." she murmured weakly, "Nensha..."

"What?"

"Nensha... nensha, nensha, nensha..." the woman turned, and bustled around to rummage through a pile of newspaper scraps on her table, apparently just rearranging them and nothing more.

"What is nensha?" Sam whispered, looking over at Dean.

"She's speaking nonsense, man." he said darkly.

"Nensha is her way back in." Evelyn turned around again, with a lopsided smile, "Nensha, and the ones who have it... and other gifts, they have other gifts too..." her voice was quiet as she walked shakily towards Sam, "Gifts like you..."

Sam held the book out for Dean to take, and made a small, unsure step back, "What?"

"Gifts like you..."

"Gifts like me? I'm a... wait, what are you talking about?"

"You have it." her voice was raspy as she pointed a crooked finger at him.

"Have what?"

"You have it... You have it, You have it! You have it!" her voice grew louder, and she was shuffling faster, more frantically for him.

"Sam!" Dean called out.

"Just like her!" She wailed, "You have it just like her!" her hands were outstretched, reaching up for Sam as he continued to back away, completely bewildered. The door clicked open.

"Evelyn!" came the man's stern call.

"You have it! You must die! YOU MUST DIE!" she shrieked, grabbing for Sam.

The man's burly arms suddenly wrapped around her middle, cutting her off just before she reached Sam, pinned against a wall. Her fingernails raked across the skin of his throat, as he flinched back. "You need to get out of here." he ordered, looking between the two of them. "Now!"

"Get out!" Evelyn screeched, "Get out, GET OUT! And don't let her take you!"

Sam, without second thought, rushed out the door, quickly followed by an unhesitating Dean.

"What the hell was that all about?" Dean snapped angrily as they hurried down the hallway. "That got us nothing but a bunch of wasted time, Sam!"

"It got us more than that..." Sam breathed, a hand nervously on his throat. He looked shaken as he strode swiftly down the white halls toward the exit. "We know what Samara's after."

"Yeah!" Dean snapped, "You!"

"Just calm down, allright?" Sam frowned, his own voice shaky, looking back at him, "Just give me some time, I'll make some sense of it."

"We need to call that Rachael again, she's gotta be able to give us something better than this..." he hissed.

"You drive." Sam said, passing quickly through the doors, and making for the car, not that it was ever any different.

Dean sighed frustratedly, and got in the car, "And what're you gonna do?"

"I have to look some things up..." he muttered quietly, "I... I think I know what she's talking about. And we have all these resources right here..." he trailed off, pulling Samara's pink diary from his pocket, setting it atop the large book that had belonged to Evelyn, and beside the blank tape.

"Then you're as crazy as she is." Dean murmured, beginning to drive.

"Shut up." Sam hissed.

"Look, I'm sorry! I just... ugh... it's... it's too complicated right now." he shook his head, "Both of us know that you're the brains and I'm the brawn. And right now I'm really hoping those brains of yours are helping you figure something really decent out."

"They would if you would just let me!" he said through gritted teeth, his hand clenching around, and crumpling up the corner of a page.

Sighing softly, Dean ran a hand over his forehead, as if massaging away a headache, asking meekly a moment later, "Where to?"

"Anywhere." Sam was already trying to concentrate on something else, looking through the book purposefully, "Seattle." he suggested, and with a nod, Dean turned onto the highway. With a little luck, and going just a little fast... they'd get there before sunset.

All went silent. An electricity hung in the air, from the high tensions within the car. Dean concentrated on the road, and putting other thoughts out of his mind, while Sam concentrated on his work, pouring over the mostly-mad ramblings in the larger of the notebooks, occasionally checking something in his own collection, and also opening Samara's little journal once in a while. Each time Dean chanced a glance over at his brother, the expression on his face had gone from bad to worse.

At once, he pulled to a stop, almost as abrupt as the last time he had done so, at Shelter Mountain Inn. Sam looked up once he realized they were sitting idle at the side of the road, and looked back to Dean, swallowing. "What is it?"

"Contrary to popular belief, I _can_ multitask..." Dean muttered, "And I've been watching you. I haven't seen you this scared since you were five and dad told you the boogieman was real." he said, "Plus, you've been staring at that same page for the last twenty minutes, not even reading." he sighed, "So what is it? What've you found out?"

Sam swallowed, and looked out the window. "She wants me." he said softly.

"We already know that."

"No, you don't understand." he turned around, brow furrowed, eyes glazed with worry, "She wants to control me. She wants to possess me." he swallowed.

"How do you know that?" he frowned.

"Evelyn as good as told us that Samara was possessed... then she went on about my own gifts, and we both know what she meant by that..."

"Sam, how could she possibly have known..."

"That's not the point... what I'm saying is..." he trailed off, sighing, and thinking how to get it straight. "Evelyn mentioned something called nensha... and I looked through her book, and it was in there too. It explained what it is..."

"Which is?" Dean watched him pointedly.

"Nensha is the Japanese word for the ability to project an image from your mind onto... something else. To someone else's head, to thin air... That's what she meant when she was telling the doctor about those pictures in the hospital record. I bet that she can even project them... to a videotape..." he looked down at the black cassette, then held it up. "That's what I think this is. It's an extension of Samara's will."

"And what does she will?" he continued questioning.

"In Samara's diary..." he began, ignoring the question for now, and flipping it open, he read "She says 'I've seen it, like I see other things. And whenever I see something, it happens.' Dean, doesn't that sound exactly like what happens to me?" he looked down again, and closed the book.

"Like your visions?"

"And then Evelyn said not to let her take me..." he murmured, "It all makes sense..."

"Not to me!" he said frustratedly, "What are you getting at?"

He looked up and frowned, "Samara had these powers just like I did, and she got taken over by some spirit. Now that she's a spirit too, she wants in to a body that has the same powers she did..."

Dean swallowed, and slowly shook his head, knowing what he was about to hear, but not wanting to have to hear it.

Sam watched him closely as he spoke again, "She wants control of me."

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Whoo, writing as a crazy person is fun, but hard. I had to check and recheck to see if I got out all the right information in the cryptic manner I'd meant to. Honestly, I only just came up with this twist in the story... but I figured it made sense. After all, Aiden got taken over in The Ring Two. I guess people with that kind of sensitivity to spirits are also susceptible to them, too. Information on nensha was taken from a site called 'ringworld'. You can find it on google, it mostly focuses around the Japanese 'the ring', but they kept that power of Samara's constant through both versions of the movie... I just thought I'd mention it. I'm a little surprised with my own rate of writing… I guess I've just been more simultaneously bored and inspired recently than I had been before.

P.S. thingy... if anybody can suggest any and all horror movies that I might be able to do Supernatural crossovers with... I've only just realized what a potentially good series this could make. XD If possible, I'd like to refrain from hack'n'slash zombie type things, and you've got to take it into account that I haven't seen nearly as many horror movies as I'd like... but I got to thinking, and I just couldn't come up with any. So if anybody out there wants to see their favorite horror movie crossed over with Supernatural, do a shout out in review-form and I'll see if I can get to it sometime. XD

Ideas on that: Not 'Cursed', not 'The Grudge', not 'Dark Water'. Maybe-possibly some of the Freddy Creuger series, though I'd have to rent them all and watch them repeatedly.

Okay, seriously, I'm done now. Bye.


	10. Chapter 10

A thought occurred to Dean as he was sitting, sleepless, on the bed of his Seattle hotel room that night. _Seventh day is supposed to be the day of rest..._ he thought blandly, eyeing the bible all hotels had somewhere in the room. This one was lying on the nightstand, in his line of vision as he looked over to Sam, peacefully asleep on the second bed. Thank god for that at least. _Somehow I don't think the word of god is going to get her to stop tailing Sammy, though._

Dawn was breaking on the horizon far below their room, high up on the skyscraper, as a couple things came together for him…

-

'So tell me why she's important again?' he'd asked his brother on the long drive from Moesko Island to Rachael's house.

'She found the girl's body.' Sam replied, 'At the bottom of the well. She notified the authorities, and they came to check it out. That's why we found police tape around that cabin.'

-

_She found the body..._ he thought, looking over at Sam, _...that means..._ he reached over, and slid the thin little laptop off of Sam's bed, and onto his own, flipping it open, and beginning to tap away on the keys. He didn't like laptops much. It wasn't that he didn't know how to use him... he just didn't know how to use them well.

"Gotcha..." he triumphantly breathed.

"What are you doing?" came a tired tone from Sam's bed, and Dean looked over to see his bleary-eyed, bed-headed brother sitting up from where he'd been silently laying. A wicked grin was plastered over the elder's face, which made Sam blink a few times, before shaking his head in confusion, and pressing, "What?"

"Burn the bitch!" Dean said happily. "Sammy, you never told me this article mentioned where they buried the girl..." he turned the screen around so his brother could see the saved document he had, clearly listing the cemetery and lot the girl had been placed in. "She may be using a tape to do her haunting, but she can't haunt unless she actually exists. So this is as standard as anything! We just need to toast her!"

Sam blinked once, twice, then looked down at himself, apparently pondering the concept, before he turned his face back up towards Dean, asking quizzically, "Why didn't we think of that earlier?"

-

A short amount of driving, and alot of hard labor later, they'd unearthed the unnaturally marshy and wet grave of Samara Morgan. The body was, admittedly, one of the grossest things Dean had ever seen in all his years of hunting. A haunting grey skeleton, small, and robed in tattered white, with long dark hair still clinging vainly to the skull. And despite all of the skin being long since gone, a cloud of buzzing black flies would not leave them alone throughout their entire task.

"So. Now that the worst is over..." Said a disheveled, mud-coated, and very tired looking Dean, leaning on his dirty shovel for support, "Time for a little celebration. You got the gas?" he asked Sam with a weary grin.

"Yup." came the response, as his brother lugged a huge container of kerosene over from the trunk of the Impala. He half-spilled, half-poured it over the wet body. Water or no, with this stuff on it, it couldn't help but burn.

Dean reached into a pocket and pulled out a match, lighting it along the coarse wood of the shovel's long handle. "Say bye-bye..." he leered over the little girl's body, dropping the match, and the thing was almost instantly engulfed in flames. "We've had enough trouble from you. I'm an inch away from starting to roast marshmallows."

Sam only gave a weak smirk to that, as always sarcastic remark. Something about this just didn't feel right. Something in his mind... it felt... silent. Empty. But as if it shouldn't feel that way. It was silence like the sound was being blocked, not like there was no sound at all.

"Hey. Hey, c'mon man. Chin up, we won." Dean said, drawing closer, and looking at Sam a little worriedly. He grinned then, trying to get the man off-guard, "Let's go celebrate."

-

Dean's idea of celebrate, and Sam's idea of celebrate were both quite different. Dean meant go to a bar and get drunk. Sam meant go to the hotel room and get some sleep. In the end, it wound up being Sam's idea that prevailed. He'd been sleeping unnaturally deep and long lately... and being tired so often...

...though for now it was natural, Dean thought. After the long day of work... no wonder he was exhausted. But he himself had been up all night before, _and_ done the gravedigging work, and still found no rest.

It was the seventh day... night had settled. It was growing late... He had no doubt that they had succeeded in banishing Samara, but still... Sam's chosen time was nearing, and Dean wasn't about to doze off during it. He'd be up beside him, with a rocksalt gun in hand, waiting to fight off whatever might try and jump him... if in fact something did.

It was two-o-clock in the morning. The man had been growing drowsy ever since midnight, and mentally slapped himself every time he felt himself drifting into sleep. His hand tensed on the metal trigger of the gun. His eyes darted constantly between the green-numbered clock, and the ominous black form of the TV, looming and reflecting the room in the dim light.

At three-o-clock he'd gotten over the hump, and was once again slightly more awake. That didn't keep him from jumping practically through the roof when a cellphone rang. He looked wildly over to the desk, now aware that his body was shivering.

_Hold it together._ he urged himself, reaching for the device. It was Sam's making the noise, not his... that made him more nervous still. Slowly, he opened it, a gun pointed at the television as he did so, keeping his face a good distance away from the earpiece and speaker, just in case something decided to reach out of it and grab his head or something.

"Hello?" he asked, speaking loud enough so the faraway censors could pick up his speech, but softly enough that he did not wake up his sleeping brother.

"...Hello... Sam?" came a familiar voice.

"No. Dean." he responded, bringing the phone closer to his ear, but not dropping the gun an inch, "Look, whoever you are, and why ever you were calling my brother this early in the morning, this really isn't a good time, so I'm sure you could leave a message..."

"It's _Rachael_!" the person on the other side hissed. "I need to talk to him."

"Well why can't you talk to me?" Dean tried the whole charm thing again, though he was beginning to seriously not like this chick.

"Why can't I talk to him?" she demanded.

"Because he's asleep." Dean frowned.

"Well wake him up, this is urgent." she ordered.

"I'm sure you can tell it to me, and I'll deal with the problem." he said through gritted teeth.

There was a short silence, then she sighed, "Look, what time did your brother watch the tape?" she asked. "It was a week ago today, right? Sometime really late?"

Dean nodded, then realized she didn't know that, "Uh, yes."

"Did you guys copy the tape?"

"Why would we need to do that?"

"Because copying it stops the curse."

"We already stopped the curse." he reported, "Forever. For everyone."

Another short silence. "How did you do that?"

"We burned the body." Dean explained.

"How could that possibly help anything?" she sounded angry, or at the very least offended.

"Lady, the way we do things, it does."

She sighed, "But you should've still copied it as a failsafe..." she murmured. "How's Sam? Does he seem okay?"

"Yeah..." Dean looked across at his brother again, glimpsing the clock, 3:03, as he did so. "Yeah, he's fine."

"I'm sorry to call so late, I just... I couldn't sleep. I was worried about him."

That made Dean smirk. "He's fine." he assured.

Silence yet again, "What time did you say he watched the tape?"

"3:12 in the morning." Dean said, "If dreaming it counts as watching it."

A pause, "...allright. I still think you should have copied it." she mumbled, "Just to be sure... I'd better go now."

"Yeah..." Dean muttered absently.

"Just, do one thing for me, just to check..." Rachael began, "...take a picture of him. You probably have a camera on your phone..."

Dean nodded to himself. He did.

"Take a picture of him." she repeated, "If his face is blurry, that means the curse is still on..." silence once more. Dean, personally, was confused... and about to speak up and ask a question, before she quickly cut him off, "Goodbye." A click, and the phone was blinking to signify the end of the conversation.

He frowned, and held it in front of his face again, looking down at it a moment, as the call-screen went away, and the main-screen returned, showing the time, 3:05. He looked at Sam, and sighed. _Couldn't hurt..._ Flicking through a few menu screens, he came upon the camera, and held it up. He smiled vaguely at Sam's sleeping face, as innocent as a child's as he dreamed...

Click, flash, snap. After a moment of the picture loading, it appeared.

"God, no..." The peaceful image of Sam's dreaming face was a warped, twisted mess, the closed eyes dark black caves, the lips swollen and bulging. And worse yet, lightly superimposed over this image was another. Translucent, and barely visible in the dim quality of the picture, was stringy dark hair falling all over the actually bare white pillow, and the grey-tinged curves of a female's face settling in over his own. And staring out accusingly at Dean from the screen of his phone, piercingly cold blue eyes.

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Oh, good to be back! I had a bit of trouble getting into the swing of things with this story. I had to lookup and doublecheck things so that I knew where I was in writing this. I had alot of ideas for other fics that I also wrote first. There's a Supernatural songfic I wrote called 'Hunter' which you should all check out. Nobody will know the song, the artist who wrote it is not very well known, but the song fits so, so well. Anyway. Yeah, review, and I shall update soon.


	11. Chapter 11

Snapping the phone shut on the terrifying image, Dean hurled it across the room. It crashed with the far wall and bounced and hit the ground. Behind him, Sam stirred.

He frantically looked to the clock. 3:07. Where the hell were they going to find a place to copy a tape in the next five minutes? And at this hour of the morning! He looked at the TV, then at Sam, and scrambled out of his bed and practically pounced on the man.

"Woah, Dean!" Sam immediately gasped, suddenly awake and wriggling to get away, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Sam, we've got to get out of here..." Dean said quickly, ripping the blanket off to reveal that Sam was only wearing a sweater and boxers, "You're still cursed..."

"What? Dean, what're you talking about, I thought we-..." he trailed off, then stopped, and looked down at his arm, slowly rolling up his sleeve. The hand-print burn scar was still there... "No..." he breathed.

"Come on!" Dean yelled. He grabbed his brother by the wrist and wrenched him out of bed. "Get the tape and we're out of here."

"Where are we going to go?" Sam asked meekly, snagging the tape off the nightstand and hooking it under his arm as he was pulled along. His eyes darted to the television set, which was for some reason collecting condensation all around the edge. "What are we going to do?"

"We're going to get you as far the hell away from any televisions and phones as is humanly possible..." Dean began, "...then bust into a Radioshack and copy this thing for you." He looked at Sam nervously, as the man followed along, a look of loss and hopelessness on his face. "You're gonna be okay." he assured himself for than he did his brother.

Sam just gave a silent nod.

The elevator moved excruciatingly slowly for Dean's taste. He looked at his watch constantly as the seconds ticked by. Halfway to the bottom Sam began hyperventilating. Dean looked over in worry, and opened his mouth to ask 'are you okay', when the lights began flickering in the little chamber.

He look wildly up, _God no, not here..._ he thought. Oh, he hated elevators... no way to escape. Still though, it kept moving on it's descent down, down, down... the numbers lighting up in correspondence to the floor they were on.

Yet as they went lower and lower, the carpeted floor beneath them began to get soggy and wet... water rose and bubbled up inside it.

"No!" Dean screamed at it, as Sam backed himself into a corner. The elder looked down at his watch. 3:10. "It's not time yet!" he tried to reason with the water. A loud ding pierced the damp air in the small room, heralding their arrival to the floor of the lobby. The water sank away just as the door opened, leaving the two brothers to run out with wet ankles and shoes and seemingly no reason for it... well, Dean with wet shoes, Sam just barefoot in boxers, thus granting them strange looks from the few still about at this time of the night, as they ran out the door.

Tumbling into the car, Dean took off while Sam was still diving in and closing the door behind him. "Two minutes, man." Dean's voice was shaky and panicked as he drove down the empty streets at tire-shredding speeds. "Two fucking minutes!"

"What are we going to do?" Sam said weakly, "Burning the body... should've stopped the curse..." he murmured.

"Yeah, well it didn't." Dean frowned, turning down another street. God, there had to be a decent electronics' store _somewhere_ in this damned city. "So now Rachael tells me we've got to copy this tape to stop you from dying."

"You talked to Rachael?" he breathed questioningly, staring at Dean in the darkness. The man was silent.

"WATCH OUT!" Sam yelled as they took a turn around a corner. He pointed wildly out the windshield, gripping the armrest of his seat so that his knuckles turned white.

Dean slammed the breaks, but Sam only yelled again. "No, No! DON'T STOP!"

Standing in the road facing them was the dreaded little girl. The street was flooded, water spilling out in all directions like a river from her feet. She looked up from beyond her dark hair, cascading over her shoulders, and held an arm outstretched, unmoving as the car skidded towards her... and passed straight through.

The image fizzled like the static on a television. And Dean, after proclaiming a very loud, "Holy Shit!" and hit the gas to the floor again, tearing off down the street. In the mirror he saw the girl, apparently also a little confused, slowly look up and turn around to face them again.

The streetlights streaming down spotlighted her, and bathed her in their warm golden light to her cold grey-blue, as her entire form seemed to glow brighter and brighter, an almost angelic figure in the dark... she could have easily been mistaken for one such an innocent if it were not that Sam and Dean knew exactly what she was capable of...

The glow disappeared in a flash and crack like lightning, and so did she. Dean turned his eyes definitively back on the road ahead of him. He heaved a relieved sigh, "Oh thank god, there's one right there..." the car was brought to a screeching halt before the glass display window of a store on the side of the street. He turned to Sam and ordered, "Get the crowbar under the backseat."

Straining against inertia of the car stopping forcing him forward, Sam struggled backward to reach behind and grab the item.

Dean cocked his gun, and forced open the door quickly, hopping out and running around to wrench the passenger's side open as well. Sam slid out, and handed his brother the crowbar, which was swiftly put to use in breaking open the door of the shop. Shards of glass were sent glittering into the street, and by some miracle, an alarm didn't sound. With the small flashlight on his keychain, Dean dragged his brother in and began staring around for the desired piece of equipment. A tapedeck. A nagging darkness in the back of his mind warned that they might not be able to find it, they were ancient, after all, now that there were DVDs, and DVD burners, but if any place had it... this would be the one.

"Got one!" Sam cried. Dean hadn't noticed he'd left his side, and ran over with the flashlight.

"What're you waiting for?" he demanded, "Put it in!"

"I need something to copy it to!" Sam said frantically, glancing up at his brother from where he'd knelt by the device.

"Fuck!" Dean looked around, his light falling upon a stack of blanks on a shelf in the back. He ran for them, slipping slightly on the slick floor. Wow... it was tile, but it shouldn't be _that_ hard to walk straight on... he looked down at it. _Shit, water..._

"Dean!" came a wavering call from his brother.

"What is it?" he asked, reaching up for one of the blank tapes stacked on the shelves, not even bothering to look away from his current task.

"You'd better hurry!"

Turning around, he saw the room lit with an eerie green-grey light. Every single television set was showing the same image. A clearing in the forest, scraggly trees behind, tall, thin, and bare. An all-too-familiar well lay open in the center of it.

"Catch!" the tape was thrown to him, and Sam quickly stuffed it into the second slot on the recorder, fumbling with the buttons to try and get them both to do the right thing...

"Hurry it up!" Dean ordered, standing protectively at his brother's back, after having scrambled over to him, "She's coming!"

Sure enough. A good two dozen screens displayed the same terrible image. The girl pulling herself up from the depths of the well, finding her footing on the ground, and staggering slowly forwards... slowly, slowly, slowly... then a flash, and she was closer...

"Come _on_, Sammy! Make that damn thing go faster!" Dean held his gun out. At this rate, they were going to be surrounded and assaulted by not one creepy little girl, but at least twenty.

"I can't! It's got to go all the way through at the same speed it takes the original to play..."

BLAM. A shot rang out, and a shatter. One television spilled it's glass and electronic insides all over the floor.

BLAM. "Yeah, well I'm buying you as much time as I can..." Dean glanced back at him, then shot at another set. BLAM. Crash, glass spilled all over the floor, and the image faded. Then, with a rushing torrent, water spilled out of the broken screen, crashing in a white spray on the ground below.

_Damnit..._ Dean bitterly thought as he lowered the gun to another screen, and the wave from the water sloshed against his calves, _...after we get out of this, I'm going to be afraid to shower for the next month because of all the water..._

Sam remained crouched before the recording tape, ignoring the madness around him, as Dean backed farther and farther into him, fearfully staring down the nearing images of Samara... as one of them, the one just ahead of them both, at last finished its approach to the screen. A hand reached out, pressed against the glass, then passed through, straining against the threshold.

"Holy Shit!" Dean called out again. All the other images flickered, and faded, as this one pulled itself out of the screen, all the while an unignorable buzzing burning in his ears.

Sam groaned behind him, hands clasped around his head, fingers lacing through and pulling roughly at his hair as the tape he was recording mimicked the sound of Samara's escape, making it doubly loud and painful.

BLAM. A bullet whizzed out of the barrel of his gun, impacting on the screen, and it blackened as the glass flew through the image of the girl still struggling her way out of it... though this only appeared to make it easier for her. With a wet flop she fell onto the floor amidst the flood of water.

"Where are we at Sammy?" his voice shook as he dropped his now useless gun, and pulled out the other one, loaded with rocksalt.

"Almost..." he choked, "...almost done..."

Dean chanced a glance at his brother, crouched and doubled over on the floor, his eyes still straining upwards to the tape as it counted down the last few numbers. Looking back, the raven-haired spectre had closed the distance between them in mere seconds, and he gasped, instinctively raising the gun and firing.

White salt crystals sprayed through the air, doing no more than making ripples on the illuminated surface of her body. Silently, she tilted her chin up, and the hair fell away from her face, revealing black lips pulled into an ugly frown. Soulless eyes glared up at the man... Erratic, jerky motions defined her movements as she reached up, taking a stone-cold, and iron-hard grip on his neck. He choked, and gagged for the air. The gun fell from his hand and splashed into the water.

"Dean!" he faintly heard Sam call.

With the unnatural strength that such spirits often had, Samara threw him aside, sending him skidding across the flooded floor. "No...!" he spluttered, after his body's path was blocked, and his movement broken by a tall shelf with yet more televisions on it. "Sam!"

He turned wildly, and looked up into the eyes of the little girl that loomed over him, kneeling. Amidst the swallowing shadows, she glowed with her own light, while a thin arm reached for his neck, too. The man's face paled several shades as he pushed himself away from her, squeezing his entire body up against the shelf that the tape recorder was doing its work on.

"SAM, NO!" came another frantic call from Dean, across the room, as he coughed, choking and drowning on the water he'd inhaled, while all the while still trying to force his body to move.

As bony fingers closed and tightened around Sam's hot skin, the man's eyes closed tight, tears streaming from them as he fought for breath. And the tape behind him buzzed in completion. His eyes snapped open, and hazily wandered over to the device, as the flap over the rectangular slot opened up, and the tape was spat out.

_Yes!_ Sam thought, a shining bolt of hope dazzling through his mind... or maybe it was lack of oxygen. Feebly, as the girl was forcing him slowly to the ground with her alarming strength, an arm reached up for it, flailed slightly, missing several times... "Ugh..." he grunted, at last feeling his fingers brush against the warm plastic, still heated from being used inside the machine... but all his strength had left him, and he could not even close his grip around it to pull it out.

His arm splashed into the water beside him, and his vision faded to blacks and whites, blurred even.

At last, a yell broke through the oncoming silence, and the scrape of plastic on plastic as Dean pulled out the tape, and slipped it into his vision, barring the view between Samara's eyes and his own.

"He's got it!" the man yelled, "He's got it! He's copied the damn tape, now get the hell away!" He would've shot her, but for the effect it had last time it would've only hit Sam.

The girl paused, not yet relinquishing her grip, and turned her gaze just slightly away, seemingly taking in the sight of the tape, before her head whipped around, and she gave a gurgling hiss, water boiling and bubbling inside her decayed mouth, as one hand let go, and swung around to hit Dean yet again, once more sending him sliding away across the ground.

_No..._ Sam dizzily tried to focus on the thing that was killing him as it bore down. _No... why...? We did everything right... why..._ maybe they'd copied it too late. Maybe burning her body only made her more pissed off...

In the eternity it seemed to take for him to slip away into death, some things began to make sense. Burning the body didn't dispell the spirit, copying the tape didn't either, but saved the copier from death. So what did that do? At last, he understood.

Normally for spirits, no body, no survival. Samara was different. Her existence, her very consciousness was connected to these tapes as a result of her strange power, nensha. You couldn't just burn her bones and be done with it, you had to destroy each and every single thing her will was connected to. Each new copy of the tape that someone makes adds to willpower, and essentially makes her stronger...

...and not only that. Each new tape was another chance for her to spread her word, and her story, and her will and her mission. And her mission? To take over those people who possessed the same powers that she did when she was alive. People like Sam.

_But why me?_ he slowly thought, _Why do I have this damned power anyway? All it does is give me trouble, damnit, why!_

In his unconsciousness, he heard the spine-tingling familiar voice of Samara speaking out to him, **_"Where's mommy?"_** she called, a strange, childlike gentleness to her usually throaty growl.

Then it all hit him. What was the single defining moment that had turned around the entire course of his life even after it had only just begun? How had his family been thrown along down the road to hunting? And who had been the one person that could've changed all that? And why hadn't she?

"My mom..." he breathed weakly to the girl, "...is dead."

A pause. The tightening pressure around his neck diminished. From the blinding whiteness and blackness that had flashed through his vision all at once, an image cleared... He was lying flat out on the ground, his face just barely above the water, so that he could see the little spirit straddling his chest, and looking off to one side at the two, yes two plain black tapes floating in the water there.

Slowly, she stood up, and moved off to one side of him, her gaze still peering down at the tapes. At last, she turned once more to Sam, watching him through her tunnel of hair.

**_"I wanted..."_** she said softly, as a single tear glinted down her pallid cheek, **_"...my mommy."_**

With a crackle, she was gone. The TVs still intact flashed bright, then went dim, and all the water sunk away.

Sam fell back, completely spent. His eyes closed, and he missed the completely blank, confused expression on Dean's face as the older man sat up, and took the whole scene in.

"Sam!" he finally called out, dragging himself over, for now ignoring his own obliviousness in favor of finding out if his brother was allright. "Sam, what the hell happened?" he asked breathlessly, looking down at him.

Sleep was coming on fast for the exhausted man, and as he exerted a final effort, and cracked his eyelids open one more time to look at Dean, outlines fuzzy from between his long eyelashes, he only smiled, and managed to say: "I didn't have what she _really_ wanted."

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** I am SO happy with this chapter. As always, however, I don't think it's creepy enough... but no matter, everything came together just as planned in the end.

If you're confused, and are also _true_ ring fans, you will remember that in the second movie, the only reason Samara wanted Aiden was because, not only did he (like Sam) have the special powers that made him a weakness for spirits to slip into, but Rachael was his mother, and a very good mother to him. Everyone agrees that Mary (had she lived) would've probably been a good mother, right? Right? Yeah. But since they'd already gotten entwined with the demon of the canon Supernatural series, that foiled all of Samara's plans...

In The Ring Two, though Aiden had copied the tape already in the original The Ring, Samara continued her pursuit of him so that she could be with his mother. Just like here, Sam had finished copying the tape before she'd actually attacked him, but she disregarded this in order to take over his body. However, gave up at last when she realized he didn't have the mother she wanted.

Hang in there guys, there's oooone last chapter coming!


	12. Chapter 12

Getting Sam out of the store without tearing him open on all the broken glass had been a chore for the tired and bruised Dean. He ended up just gathering his brother in his arms, and dumping him in the back seat of the car. They made one trip back to the hotel, wherein he collected all of their things as quick as could be, before they took off and never looked back.

A message was left on Rachael's phone telling her what occurred, and letting her know that they would be borrowing Evelyn's book and the copies of the tape longer than they'd originally expected, likely at least until they could figure out this whole curse thing for good.

-

Sam looked out with a bitter expression at the dilapidated Morgan-Ranch, backgrounded by a grey sky.

"Ending this one is going to be tough, isn't it?" he asked, turning to Dean with that same slight wince.

"Damn right it is." the elder brother sighed.

"And after we leave here?" he still questioned.

"We're just gonna leave a blaze of fire in our wake." Dean grinned wickedly.

"That was very poetic of you. And after that?"

"Well... after that, we're back to square one." he put his hands in his pockets for a moment, and looked to Sam, "Back to hunting down copies of that thing at highschool dances." the thought of it made him frown a little, then reach up and scratch his head, "Just the way we started this all out. We've come full circle."

"The irony of it." Sam hissed.

"Yeah."

A silence followed as the wind blew, before Dean stepped forward, walking up to the front porch of the house, and lighting a match. The small stick sputtered, then finally burned brightly amidst the dim. He tossed it, the thing bouncing on the deck for a moment, before touching the oily liquid that lay there.

Like a whip, the fire lashed out and spread, following the gas trails they'd laid through the entire house. The brothers stepped back and watched it go up in mutual silence, before, just as the brittle structure began collapsing, they turned and left.

"So _everything_ her will is tied to?" Dean asked again, looking at Sam.

"Everything significant." he said with a nod.

"And that means everything in the tape?"

"And the convent, and the mental hospital."

Dean whistled, and shook his head, "And after that all of the tapes themselves..."

"Yeah. Then she'll finally be gone."

He looked up to his brother as they neared the car, the faintest glimmer of worry in his eyes amidst the regular mischievousness and time-for-business attitude. "That's some... mass arson you're talking about." he grinned, "Could be dangerous. Could get arrested."

Sam grinned back, "Nothing we haven't faced before."

Getting into the car, Dean nodded. "Where to?" he asked as Sam himself entered.

"The cliff. And the lighthouse. And I think that'll about wrap it up for Moesko Island."

With twist of the key, and the purr of the ignition, once again they were off.

---

**Author's Ending Note Thingy:** Short chapter, but I've always meant to end it this way. I really hope you all enjoyed reading this, I certainly enjoyed writing it. A lot. A whooole lot. Keep an eye out for more of my Supernatural and Supernatural Crossover fics, they may take a while to get out now that school's starting, but they will make it out here. That's a promise. For now, toodles!


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